Voice-Controlled Intralogistics on an Open Cyber–Physical Middleware: Deep Learning-Based Speech Processing and Validation in an Industrial Noisy Environment

The rapid development of Industry 4.0 brings significant benefits to intralogistics through increased flexibility, interoperability, and real-time responsiveness. However, the growing complexity of industrial environments creates challenges for logistics process adaptation and the integration of emerging technologies such as voice-driven control of heterogeneous robotic and IoT systems. Open-source solutions offer a promising approach by enabling vendor independence and cost-effective deployment. This paper investigates the use of the OPIL cyber–physical middleware, developed within the Horizon 2020 L4MS initiative, combined with convolutional neural networks for speech denoising and keyword recognition, to enable robust voice-controlled intralogistics in demanding noisy industrial environments. A voice-controlled logistics system was designed, deployed, and empirically evaluated on the OPIL platform. The results confirm the technical feasibility of OPIL as an open and modular alternative to proprietary Industry 4.0 platforms. They further demonstrate the feasibility of integrating AI-based keyword spotting and voice interaction into environments using an open middleware architecture. The study also identifies key limitations, including reduced performance for non-native speakers and mild speech over-suppression at high signal-to-noise ratios. To support reproducibility and external validation, the complete network configurations, training procedure, and deployment data are provided.