Embodied Intelligence Empowering Customized Manufacturing: Architecture, Opportunities, and Challenges

With the continued advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology in Customized Manufacturing (CM), the current intelligence model, which separates ‘perception’ from ‘execution,’ lacks adaptability and generalizability. Embodied Intelligence (EI), an emerging technology emphasizing real-time environmental interaction and feedback, is expected to enable integrated intelligent manufacturing systems characterized by ‘perception-cognition-execution-feedback,’ enhancing the performance and intelligence of multifactor systems like the Internet of Manufacturing Things (IoMT), equipment management, and resource scheduling. However, current AI systems in CM remain isolated and lack methods for environmental interaction with multi-source perception and feedback, hindering the development of autonomous, evolving intelligent systems. To address the environmental interaction bottlenecks among diverse production elements in CM, this paper proposes a Circular Embodied Intelligence Manufacturing (CEIM) architecture aimed at enabling the fusion of heterogeneous production-element information. The objective is to enhance environmental perception and establish autonomous system evolution mechanisms, thereby optimizing production decision-making. By integrating sensor data and AI model outputs, and leveraging the advanced reasoning capabilities of large language models (LLMs), CEIM facilitates the semantic fusion of multiple production elements—including IoMT, intelligent devices, and manufacturing resources—to enable the deployment of EI applications in CM. The implementation of CEIM is illustrated and validated through a case study on a customized gift box packaging platform. Finally, this paper discusses the opportunities and challenges of applying EI in manufacturing and aims to provide insights into the future development of EI-oriented manufacturing systems.