Using autonomous intelligence to build a smart shop floor

The vision of smart shop floor is based on the notion of Industry 4.0 that denotes technologies and concepts related to Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS). In smart shop floors, CPPS monitors physical processes, creates a virtual copy of the physical world, and makes decentralized decisions. CPPS allows virtual world to store data, process data, communicate, and cooperate with each other in real time. This paper presents architecture of smart shop floor based on physical, logical, and communication layers that embed intelligent approaches within manufacturing processes. Every physical entity in the smart shop floor is regarded as an autonomous intelligent logical unit that performs operations guided by distributed control functions. Moreover, computing power and optimization approaches are embedded into each logical unit to make decisions to agilely respond to frequent occurrence of unexpected disturbances at the shop floor. A test platform has been set up to demonstrate how physical entities can be cooperative and autonomous logical units that can automatize the shop floor operations. The results verify the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed method.