Artificial Intelligence in manufacturing: State of the art, perspectives, and future directions

Inspired by the natural intelligence of humans and bio-evolution, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen accelerated growth since the beginning of the 21st century. Successful AI applications have been broadly reported, with Industry 4.0 providing a thematic platform for AI-related research and development in manufacturing. This paper highlights applications of AI in manufacturing, ranging from production system design and planning to process modeling, optimization, quality assurance, maintenance, automated assembly and disassembly. In addition, the paper presents an overview of representative manufacturing problems and matching AI solutions, and a perspective of future research to leverage AI towards the realization of smart manufacturing.