Evolvable Assembly Systems : A Development Roadmap

A new paradigm, the Evolvable Assembly Systems (EAS), was recently proposed. This paradigm provides a complete new view on how assembly systems should be designed and developed. Because the control system is one of the key aspects for a successful implementation of EAS this chapter proposes a development roadmap to pinpoint directions of research on how control systems should be developed. It is expected that with this information the industry can envision the potential benefits in terms of competitiveness of this approach. The chapter focuses on the issues that highlight the importance self-organization, dynamical systems, complexity theory, collaborative networks theory, swarm intelligence, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) have in the future of EAS. The chapter emphasizes the importance of these mechanisms in solving the increasing challenges imposed upon automatic precision assembly companies that constantly battle to attain agile or evolvable assembly systems.