Now That's Smart

This article describes the features and development of intelligent machines and concentrates on their information processing infrastructure. IEC 61499 function blocks have been used in these experiments as the driving vehicle to achieve important features of the intelligent machines such as reconfigurability. Information infrastructure of intelligent machines is based on the IEC 61499 architecture . The function block architecture of IEC 61499 provides a new degree of flexibility in managing embedded control and information processing systems through the lifetime of industrial automation products. The requirements of flexible manufacturing and material handling systems, such as rapid integration and reconfiguration, as well as the growing information intensity of the production environments imply that manufacturing equipment is becoming more autonomous and intelligent.