Robotics and Manufacturing Automation

Manufacturing automation is vital to various industrial sectors: aeronatic, automotive, biomedical, consumer goods, and others. Two main trends influence the development of manufacturing automation: the large availability of data, reflecting the environment and the manufacturing process, and the emergence of robotics‐based systems, and in general, robotics as a framework for autonomous systems. Both trends impose the integration of more powerful and adaptive control and optimization approaches, enabling new functionality and new business models. This new generation of controllers unifies data‐driven, predictive, and learning‐based methods making use of the available data, and of the increased computation possibilities due to cloud connectivity and access to better hardware in general. Availability of data and computation capabilities aligns in the concept of digital twin, a living virtual replica of the industrial system, which enables flexible and economically viable approaches to monitoring, predictive maintenance, and individualized production, and more efficient means to control the manufacturing systems.