The paper discusses the possibilities of incorporating sensors and indicators into the environment of an Industry 4.0 digital factory. The concept of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is characterized via a brief description of the RAMI 4.0 and I4.0 component model. In this context, the article outlines the structure of an I4.0 production component, interpreting such an item as a body integrating the asset and its electronic form, namely, the Asset Administration Shell (AAS). The formation of the AAS sub-models from the perspectives of identification, communication, configuration, safety, and condition monitoring is also described to complete the main analysis. Importantly, the authors utilize concrete use cases to demonstrate the roles of the given I4.0 component model and relevant SW technologies in creating the AAS. In this context, the use cases embody applications where an operator wearing a SmartJacket equipped with sensors and indicators ensures systematic data collection by passing through the manufacturing process. The set of collected information then enables the operator and the system server to monitor and intervene in the production cycle. The advantages and disadvantages of the individual scenarios are summarized to support relevant analysis of the entire problem.

The article presents a detection system with spider web coil-based wireless charging. Commonly available metal detectors are sold as handheld systems, which enable only progressive, lengthy, time-consuming search. Importantly, a part of the investigated area can thus be easily missed, and the probability that a metal object will not be found increases substantially. This problem, however, is eliminable via the automatic position tracking mode embedded in the solution obtained through our research. The proposed system facilitates using the spider web coil simultaneously for wireless charging and metal detection by pulse induction. The topology of the detector can emit variable pulse lengths, thus allowing the device to detect more types of metal and to adapt itself to the permeability of the soil. The coil has a branch in a relevant part of the winding to reduce undesirable electromagnetic interference during the charging. On the transmitting side of the topology, impedance matching is included to maintain the maximum spatial gap variability. By changing the position of the receiving side, the output voltage changes; therefore, a high efficiency DC/DC converter is employed. The individual battery cells demonstrate different internal resistances, requiring us to apply a new method to balance the cells voltage. The system can be utilized on self-guided vehicles or drones; advantageously, a GPS resending the coordinates to a mesh radio allows for accurate positioning. With the mesh topology, potential cooperation between the multiple systems is possible. The setup utilizes the same coil for wireless power transfer and detection.

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