Using autonomous intelligence to build a smart shop floor

The vision of smart factory is based on the notion of Industry 4.0 that denotes technologies and concepts related to cyber-physical systems and the Internet of Things (IoT). In smart factories cyber-physical systems monitor physical processes, create a virtual copy of the physical world and make decentralized decisions. Over the IoT, cyber-physical systems communicate and cooperate with each other in real time. This paper presents a smart factory architecture based on communication and computing layers that embed scheduling mechanisms within a mechanical shop floor. Every physical entity in the shop floor is seen as an autonomous intelligent agent that performs tasks guided by dynamic scheduling functions. A test bed has been set up to show how physical entities can be cooperative and autonomous units that can automatize the shop floor operation processes. The results verify the feasibility and efficiency of proposed method. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.