Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing Equipment, Automation, and Robots

The machines that perform manufacturing processes are the embodiment of these processes. This chapter discusses AI topics related to manufacturing equipment, automation, and robots. There is a wide range of problems requiring decision-making at the machine level, including the selection of the most appropriate type of machine for processing one or more parts, the identification of parameters for the machine’s kinematic and dynamic models, the calculation of the optimum tool path, the selection of control strategy and gains. More specifically, the chapter examines (i) AI for manufacturing equipment definition—design—selection, (ii) task planning and machine programming, (iii) machine control and workstation orchestration and (iv) machine perception. For each topic the scope and the theoretical background is initially provided and then selected cases of AI applications are discussed. This chapter takes a deep dive into AI solutions for industrial robotics that are being widely used since their introduction in the manufacturing systems in the second half of the twentieth century.