Continuous Virtual Commissioning for multi-robot systems operating in shared workspaces

Virtual Commissioning (VC) is a model-based method used to assess the correctness of a machine’s control software against a digital representation of the plant. Beyond its traditional role in supporting machine ramp-up, VC is increasingly considered for validating numerical control (NC) program changes during operation. However, in tightly coupled multi-robot workcells with shared workspaces, revalidating full NC programs after local modifications is typically infeasible within production time constraints. This article proposes a method for localizing and selectively validating NC program changes in such environments. The approach identifies coordination-relevant modifications, restricts validation to affected execution intervals, and evaluates potential robot–robot interactions within these localized windows using a collision-risk analysis. Only interactions with non-zero collision risk are forwarded for replay in an existing VC model, leaving the underlying plant and control models unchanged. The method is evaluated in a VC model of a multi-robot gantry cell reflecting the coordination structure of an aircraft fuselage drilling station. In a disturbance scenario involving a 25% slowdown of one robot and task redistribution, the validation scope is reduced from a full 391.8 s cycle with 200 robot tasks to two localized intervals covering 67.6 s (17%) and 11 tasks (5.5%). All collision-relevant interactions introduced by the modification are contained within these intervals. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach enables efficient VC-based validation of NC program changes in multi-robot shared workspaces while preserving collision safety.