Intelligent Manufacturing Systems and Applications in Industry 4.0

Dear Colleagues,

Intelligent manufacturing system (IMS) integrates smart machines, new-generation information and communications technology and artificial intelligence (AI) for the best possible manufacturing outcomes. It is regarded as a new manufacturing model that greatly upgrades the design, production, management, and integration of the whole life cycle of a typical product. It plays the core role in industry 4.0. Recently, intelligent manufacturing has been receiving much more attention from academia and industry. New technologies such as deep reinforcement learning (DRL), knowledge automation (KA), computer vision (CV), the internet of things (IoT) and cyber-physical system (CPS), enable the manufacturing system more intelligent and smarter:

• AI plays an essential role in an IMS by providing typical features such as learning, reasoning, and acting. With the use of DRL technology, manufacturing systems are trained beforehand to cooperate and aim for a near-optimal schedule.
• IMS varies with various factors, such as operating environment, external uncertainties, and self-operating conditions. This requires a comprehensive model obtained by fusing expert knowledge and visual image information.
• IoT-enabled manufacturing refers to an advanced principle in which typical production resources are converted into smart manufacturing objects (SMOs) that can sense, interconnect, and interact with each other to automatically and adaptively carry out manufacturing logics. 
• A CPS involves a large number of trans-disciplinary methodologies such as cybernetics theory, mechanical engineering and mechatronics, design and process science, manufacturing systems, and computer science. One of the key technical methods is embedded systems, which enable a highly coordinated and combined relationship between physical objects and their computational elements or services.

This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for researchers and engineers from academic institutes and industrial sectors to exchange their research ideas, disseminate their recent research results, and overview emerging research directions in intelligent manufacturing systems and applications.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Artificial intelligence techniques for manufacturing systems;
• Control methods and strategies in manufacturing systems;
• Intelligent optimization for manufacturing systems;
• Cloud manufacturing in the context of Industry 4.0;
• Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled manufacturing;
• Digital twins for manufacturing systems;
• Cyber-physical systems;
• Intelligent design for customized products;
• Integrated and intelligent manufacturing;
• Industrial internet architecture and theory;
• Information systems and network security;
• Industrial robots.

Prof. Dr. Chunjie Yang
Prof. Dr. Qing-Guo Wang
Prof. Dr. Ping Zhou
Prof. Dr. Zhaohui Jiang
Dr. Zhuoyun Nie
Guest Editors

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