.

1. A Unified Dashboard for Collaborative Robot
Management System
Hishamadie Ahmad
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
hishamadie.ahmad@mimos.my
Mohd Nizam Mohd Mydin
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
nizam.mydin@mimos.my
Mohammad Fairus Khalid
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
fairus.khalid@mimos.my
Bukhary Ikhwan Ismail
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
ikhwan.ismail@mimos.my
Rajendar Kandan
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
rajendar.kandan@mimos.my
Ong Hong Hoe
Advanced Computing Lab
MIMOS Berhad
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
hh.ong@mimos.my
Abstract—Industry Revolution 4.0 transforms product
design and fabrication. It revolutionize how manufacturing
operates and performs maintenance. Information Technology
plays a crucial role in IR4.0 that drives the digitalization of
manufacturing. The combination of Information Technology
with Operational Technology forms the core of Smart
Manufacturing. It works beyond automation and machine-to-
machine communications. Among the benefits of IR4.0 are
enhanced efficiency in production, mass-customization of
product, zero downtime, extended tool life and energy efficiency.
Robotics is an ideal smart technology of IR4.0. Current trend in
Robotics introduces the deployment of collaborative robot, for
SME. However, monitoring and interaction with such system
comes with additional challenges especially in large-scale
deployment. Dashboard application becomes more important
for such system to have a better management. Most of the
existing applications are managed in an isolated system even
within the same factory, thus make it difficult to maintain and
troubleshoot if problems occur. In this paper, we proposed a
design of centralized dashboard application with interactive 3D
visualization and informative visualization for managing and
troubleshooting COBOT System.
Keywords—Collaborative Robot, dashboard, visualization,
user interface, Industry Revolution 4.0
I. INTRODUCTION
Robotics is a fast paced industry. It keeps evolving and
revolutionizes human way of life. The utilization of robots
capabilities brings a wide range of benefits including in
productivity and efficiency. The lack of centralized
application or dashboard in the COBOT System and no proper
integrations between COBOT applications makes operation
and maintenance difficult to handle. Troubleshooting would
require too much effort in understanding, given the available
unprocessed data. These issue proves to be a challenge in the
area of COBOT Systems.
The main objective is to have a single dashboard
application managing multiple COBOT Systems that would
combine both operational and maintenance input and
eventually display the processed data in a unified and
simplified way through the dashboard.
In this paper, we propose a unified dashboard which would
act as a one stop center to monitor, operate, maintain and
troubleshoot the COBOT Systems. We categorize three types
of user namely super admin, admin and a normal user. Each
users has a set of privileges (a list of permitted operations) and
a different form of dashboard views accordingly. We
introduce a hierarchical view of COBOTs which mainly help
to provide aggregated information about COBOTs. This will
also help user to control certain actions to a group of COBOTs
having similar attribute. Another feature we address is
interactive 3D visualization for troubleshooting, which could
manage COBOT movement operations and maintenance.
This paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the
background and our proposed solution in Section III.
Implementation and results are discussed in Section IV
followed by conclusion in Section V.
II. BACKGROUND
A. Industry Revolution 4.0 in Malaysia
Industry Revolution 4.0 creates opportunity as well as
threats to the industry [1]. Companies that fail to adapt may
suffer from being irrelevant and will fail in creating new and
innovative products. IR4.0 increases productivity and
production output and reduces the dependency of foreign
labor [4]. Malaysia’s Ministry of Trade and Investment
(MITI) has set up an Industry4WRD an IR4.0 national policy.
Among the objectives are to create new job creation, enhance
productivity, innovation in product development and have
skilled talent in IR4.0 [2].
B. Edge Computing in IR4.0
For the past 10 years, cloud computing has matured.
Nevertheless, the latency in data transmission and network
communication is still and an issue. Edge computing can solve
the problem by processing data and information closer to the
source [3].The accelerated decline in computing costs
compared to network, drives the demand for moving
computing nearer to the source of data. Computing requires
high CAPEX, while operational networking costs more in the
long run. Placing computing power near to the edge is the
approach that is much more sensible. In future, computers
compute power will shift from macro to micro-build data
centers, that will be in close proximity, modular and mobile
[4]. Open platform edge economy will emerge. Companies
can run applications on edge, while the infrastructure is owned
by a different entity. In manufacturing scenario, edge-
computing technology provides greater and faster response
time for delivering actionable analytics to the manufacturer
where processing is done directly on the shop floor closer to
the factory equipment’s [1].

2. C. Collaborative Robot
Collaborative robot (COBOT) is a breed of ROBOT that
manipulates objects and can work in close proximity with
humans. COBOT can assist worker in complex tasks hand-in-
hand with human for task which is not fit for full automation.
With COBOT, the human-machine collaboration helps a
person with challenging, repetitive, and complex activities
while protecting the worker from health or work injuries. For
example, it can perform more accurate assembly related
activities compared to a human.
It is a lightweight device as compared to industrial robots
and can be placed and relocated easily [5]. Among the
benefits of COBOT are increase in productivity and improved
workspace condition in terms of ergonomics and safety.
COBOT is suitable for small to mid-sized industry needs. It is
one of the smart device suitable to be adopted in IR4.0.
III. PROPOSED USER INTERFACE
The dashboard application is a part of COBOT system. It
is a main place user can oversee all COBOT operation,
manage the problems and with the capability of controlling it.
We monitor the COBOT from cloud. Each production cell
consists of COBOT arm, manipulator controller, gripper and
other equipment attached [6].
Fig. 1. Proposed user interface on cloud
We deploy our user interface on cloud along with other
components for managing the COBOTs across factories as
shown in Figure 1. Application InfluxDB is used to store
time-series data. MQTT subscriber and publisher for getting
health information and COBOT operation respectively. Mi-
Focus manages host application as containers on cloud as well
as edge. Mi-Cloud is used to manage Virtual machines for
containers. Mi-ROSS is used for storage solutions across
Virtual machines. Mi-Focus registry manages the Docker
images across Cloud and Edge.
A. Edge Components
Our Edge consists of the following components: -
1) COBOT – COBOT arm, gripper and controller.
2) Edge Server - communicate with factory equipment
e.g. PLC, PC, COBOT. One server communicates with
multiple COBOT on site.
3) Edge MQTT instance – publisher of data collected
from factory equipment & subscriber to cloud MQTT for
instruction.
B. Supporting Technologies
1) Three.js - Three.js is the JavaScript framework for
displaying 3D content on the web. It provides you capabilities
to load 3D models in games, music videos, scientific and data
visualizations etc in computer web browser and on
smartphone.
2) Grafana - Grafana is an open source analytics for
monitoring solution for every database. It allows user to
query, visualize, alert on and understand your metrics no
matter where they are stored [7].Among supported databases
are Graphite, Prometheus, InfluxDB, ElasticSearch, MySQL,
PostgreSQL etc.
3) Storage – three types types of data. Elasticsearch to
store events and logs. InfluxDB to store time series data,
RDBMS to store static information.
4) Docker - Docker is an Open Source OS-level
virtualization tool that facilitates the creation of a set of
software into one isolated environment called container. A
container differ from virtual machine (VMs) in which a VM is
an abstraction of physical hardware resources and
encapsulate the entire operating system, whereby a container
is an abstraction of application layer that isolates an area
within an operating system, but share the same OS kernel and
physical resources as the host. It does this by leveraging on
existing technology on linux OS, namely cgoups and
namespaces. Container utilizes less space than a VM would,
and is less demanding on hardware resources which provides
a faster deployment of container images [8].
5) Docker Registry - Docker registy is a software created
by Docker to host Docker images. Docker images is
technically a file that contains multiple layers, that is used
during the execution of Docker containers. The registry itself
is a stateless and highly scalable application that stores and
distributes Docker images. Distributed container hosts
benefits by having Docker registry, as images can be pushed
and pulled from a centralized location. The scaling of Docker
registry can serve a large number of access and speed up
image access in the process [8].
6) Kubernetes is a popular container orchestration
framework designed by Google. It is an open source product
that aims at deploying container applications across a cluster
similar to Docker swarm. Kubernetes cluster includes at least
one master and several compute nodes. The key benefit of
Kubernetes includes portability that offers the user to install
on-premises, hybrid or public cloud.
Focus
Registry
Focus
Container management
ROSS
Storage
Cloud Datacenter
Proposed
User Interface
Factory ‘N
Factory 1
Analytics and
simulation software
Client Client
DOCKER DOCKER
Edge

3. C. Data Collection
Fig. 2. Data Collection & Users
Figure 2 shows the components that will be monitored.
We collect operations, environmental metrics and data about
production output. The goal is to collect relevant metrics to
notify and recommend actionable actions to engineers more
effectively.
TABLE I: DATA COLLECTION LIST
Areas Description COBOT specific Examples
Asset
tracking
Asset encompasses of
physical as well as
virtual/soft attributes of
equipment. To track &
maintain device in
optimum condition
Physical - model, asset ID,
manufacturing date, date of
commence
Virtual - software, OS,
application, Cobot’s Program.
Device
status &
health
Operational Status. To
observe & maximize the
effectiveness of device
utilization
Events - Start, stoppages, halt,
job status, errors, collision.
Operational metrics -
movement, gripper, spin counts,
logs, motor load, temperature,
COBOT movement –
coordinate, speed, velocity.
Environmental
conditions. Data that can
influence machine
lifetime or even
COBOT’s task.
Temperature, humidity,
vibration (hits), power
consumption, current load
Producti
on Status
Product & job status.
Data which provide
productivity rate
calculation
Program status, current
task/sequence status, &
duration.
Table 1 shows COBOT tracking, status, health,
operational and, production data. These data provide
operational status information to the COBOT arm.
For asset tracking we collect hardware as well as software
information. Engineers can use this information to track or
check latest information pertaining to COBOT. We collect
COBOT arm movement. These data are used to visualize near
real-time COBOT movement on our dashboard as shown in .
The COBOT arm is represent with base, shoulder, elbow and
wrist. Each with angle, velocity, torque, speed and
acceleration data.
To check the status of production cell in higher
granularity, we collect the data of program and individual task
within the program itself. We collect the task status,
completion as duration to complete. From these data, we can
see if there is any stuck program or task and a possible
deviation of task duration. If any anomaly is detected, we will
then notify it to the engineers. These data can be used to
determine individual manufacturing cells productivity.
We capture the environmental data, to determine the
influence to the factory equipment. Temperature, humidity,
vibration, current is some of external stimuli that might affect
the equipment. We then compared to manufacturer’s
recommended operation standards and notify if it is beyond
the threshold or recommended environmental condition.
IV. IMPLEMENTATION & RESULTS
A. Centralized Dashboard Application from Cloud
The cloud-based dashboard application will have role-
based access and permission. There are three types of users
which are super admin, admin and user.
1) Super admin: Have all the access to all function and
dashboard pages. This type of user can create and customize
the dashboard and edit dashboard permissions.
2) Admin: Have access to multiple groups of COBOT for
example factory COBOT system admin, can customize and
create dashboards but cannot edit dashboard permissions.
3) User: Have access and view the dashboard up to
his/her assigned level
The dashboard is multi-tenant which is capable of serving
multiple types of users with one install of the application. Each
type of user have a completely different view and is isolated
within their assigned level. Multi-tenancy application is
designed to maintain a common code-based application and
run a common instance(s) of the application for multiple
tenants. This is easier to maintain for example if new firmware
available only one system needs to be updated.
Each user has their role to make sure the COBOT system
is running efficiently without any problems. Users and their
privileges are described in Figure 3.
Fig. 3. User role and privileges
As shown in Figure 4, as a super admin, their role is to
monitor, manage and maintain the whole system. They can
view the COBOT in details and read the data from each of the
COBOT in the system and control its movement. General info
and summary details of the system is also provided. If a new
firmware patch is available, Super admin can update it to all
COBOT in the system. As shown in Figure 5, admin role is
the same as super admin but only limited to their own factory.
Figure 6 describes the view of a user. As a user, they can only
have access to the COBOT details assigned to them. General
information, status and health of their COBOT will also be
displayed across all types of user.
Fig. 4. Sample super admin view
Fig. 5. Sample super admin view
Sensors Software
Robot
Arms
Gripper
s
Other
Collector
Monitor
components

4. Fig. 6. Sample user view
The dashboard adopted a hierarchical interface design.
The detailed information has been divided into multiple levels.
Clicking on the details of each level makes the user move into
a level of greater detail, so the deeper into the hierarchy, the
more detailed the information is.
COBOT installation could be a lot in the future across this
region. The hierarchical interface will make it much easier to
manage the COBOT system collectively. There are actions
instead of doing it one by one COBOT, users can apply it at
many COBOT simultaneously. Thus saving time and
operation cost. We call it “Write once, execute many”
concept.
Fig. 7. Hierarchical interface
Fig. 8. Clickable info
The hierarchical interface shows only critical and
summarized information based on their respective level. That
information is clickable and will bring the user to the table
which is filtered by clicked info. For example, if a user clicks
on Total COBOT info, the table will show a list of total
available COBOT in Region A.
The dashboard allows users to do certain actions to
multiple COBOT at the same time. Users can group COBOT
by status, region name, date and so on and then execute the
selected action. This activity can be done by using a check box
or filter field.
Fig. 9. Batch action
Figure above shows how firmware is updated to multiple
COBOT. Usually this process requires the user usually admin
to connect to each COBOT to do the firmware update.
Another action can be applied this way is scheduled
maintenance. Users can schedule maintenance especially at
night without disturbing any day operation.
B. Interactive 3D Visualization
1) Load COBOT 3D model
3D visualization, especially ones related to the robotics
industry, requires the highest level of accuracy. To make sure
of that, 3D models are acquired from COBOT manufacture.
The file is in STL format which native format usually used in
CAD applications. This file is a complex 3D model which was
used to create the COBOT itself. The vertex count is very high
because it includes all the inner vertices of the model. Since
this is just a 3D visualization only, those vertices are not
required and will be removed. Lower count vertex is important
to ensure it can be loaded in the dashboard app and can be
animated smoothly.
The model is loaded to Blender and then simplify it by
removing unnecessary vertices as mentioned above. The
texture is then applied to make it look more realistic as the
actual ones. To make animation easier to control later, the
model is divided into different parts. The parts are exported
into different filenames in gLTF(GL Transmission Format)
format.
The 3D files imported in another html portal which is
loaded with threejs plugin. Grafana will load the portal in
iframe in order to view the 3D COBOT visualization.
Fig. 10. Flow to load 3d model loads in html
2) Simulation COBOT based on data
There will be cases where COBOT failed due to certain
issues. The simulation using previous data up to the time it
failed will help users identify the problems. This visualization
also can read straight from the operational COBOT. But
latency is expected because of network limitation and
constraint. Another feature that can help the user is ability to
plan the COBOT movement. Users can record the simulation
data before applying it to the actual COBOT.
The infrastructure is ready to do bi-directional
communication i.e. Read & Control COBOT from cloud.
Safety and security precautions and procedures should be in
place before executing this feature.
C. Visualization for Troubleshooting
1) Preventive maintenance
Every COBOT need calibration after operational in certain
amount of time. The last date calibration will be stated at
COBOT details. The system will suggest a calibration if it is
near or past the date of the calibration cycle. This process can
be done remotely with the help of 3D visualization.

5. Fig. 11. COBOT calibration
2) Error report
When COBOT down or facing error, it will trigger error
notification to the user who owns it. The notification will
come as an email and SMS notification. Users also will be
notified at the dashboard.
Fig. 12. Error details
3) Efficiency report
This report will be presented by a graph that will show out
production comparison between this month and last month.
This can be used to monitor the level of efficiency of each
operational COBOT. For example, each task requires certain
amount of time to complete. Since COBOT is a mechanical
robot, over time the time to complete gradually become more
and more longer due to many factors such as wear and tear.
Like all mechanical robots, calibration and maintenance is
required periodically to make sure the COBOT is working at
optimum level.
Fig. 13. Efficiency graph
V. CONCLUSION
Our proposed dashboard solution addresses the unified
management of COBOT system across Cloud and Edge. It
provides various dashboard views based on users to simply the
overall management and control. It simplifies the user in
identifying any issues and helps them to troubleshoot with
minimal effort. In future, we plan to focus on the predictive
maintenance based on the data collected. We also plan to
expand our work with different types of COBOT available in
industry.
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