APACHE: a New Generation of Robotic Automatic Machines

The University of Bologna and IMA are joining forces to create a new generation of automatic packaging machines for the pharmaceutical and e-commerce sectors. The newly launched project is called APACHE, has a budget of €5 million, and is funded with €2.7 million by the Italian Fund for Applied Sciences (FISA).

APACHE is based on two fundamental principles: flexibility and autonomy. “We want to focus on the idea of a ‘robotic automatic machine’,” says Marco Carricato, professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering of the University of Bologna and project coordinator. “We are thinking of new technological solutions where operations are no longer carried out by a set of specific and static mechanisms, but by sequences of robots and flexible control units, capable of performing highly complex manipulation, gripping, and control tasks.”

The design and production of automatic machines and lines for packaging is one of the most important sectors of Italian industry, with a 2024 turnover of over €10 billion and 79% of production exported abroad. In this context, IMA is one of the world leaders and, together with the University of Bologna, has recently established a new research laboratory: DIGIMECH – Digital and Mechatronic Research & Innovation for Automated Machinery and Systems.

Thanks also to this established collaboration, the APACHE project aims to overcome the limitations of traditional automatic machines, responding to the growing demand for customisation and adaptability. The new packaging machines must indeed be capable of carrying out highly complex sequences of movements, which can be controlled and modified quickly, even autonomously, under the guidance of intelligent governance and control systems.

“Traditional automatic machines can handle only a limited set of products and formats, and switching from one product to another, or from one format to another, normally requires lengthy reconfigurations,” explains Dario Rea, Director of Research and Innovation at IMA Group. “Thanks to technological and digital advances, we can now overcome these limitations and design robotic automatic machines whose complex and coordinated movements can be modified via software, enabling unprecedented flexibility and adaptability.”

The APACHE researchers aim to achieve a breakthrough in the design and production of automatic machines and lines by addressing two of the sector’s main challenges: on the one hand, the demand for flexibility and versatility, and on the other, the need to meet increasingly strict requirements in terms of the quality of final products.

The research project will focus in particular on automatic machines for processing and packaging pharmaceutical products and on those for e-commerce. Packaging in the pharmaceutical sector, with a projected global turnover of €20 billion by 2028, poses major technological challenges in the fields of continuous manufacturing, robotic integration, and production traceability. Meanwhile, the e-commerce sector is driven by the demand for increasingly efficient and automated solutions: from automatic packaging machines to labelling and box-closing systems, from sorting and transport systems to robotic systems for boxing heterogeneous products.

“With APACHE we will also develop software tools capable of automatically designing effective robotic trajectories in complex scenarios, while meeting the constraints imposed by specific manipulation tasks and optimising performance,” adds Carricato. “We will also create an AI-based robotic system capable of identifying a variety of heterogeneous products and arranging them in an optimised configuration within the most suitable packaging container.”

Together with IMA, the University of Bologna is involved in the APACHE project through the Department of Industrial Engineering, the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Information Engineering “Guglielmo Marconi”, and AdapTronics, a University of Bologna spin-off specialising in sustainable logistics through hybrid mechanical and electronic systems.