Guest Editorial: Special Section on Smart Process Manufacturing Driven by Artificial Intelligence

The papers in this special section examine smart process manufacturing that is driven by artificial intelligence (AI). As a fundamental industry, process industry mainly involves elementary raw material industries, such as petroleum, chemical, steel, nonferrous metal, and building. However, there are a series of problems existing in process industry such as inaccurate perception of industrial data, low production efficiency, high materials consumption and limitations in safety and environment protection. In order to solve these restriction problems, we must pursue the goal of efficient, green, and smart processes in manufacturing and marketing. On the other hand, artificial intelligence (AI) has powerful strengths in perception, knowledge representation, learning, reasoning and planning, so that it has been successfully utilized in diverse areas, such as autonomous vehicles and so on. It is promising to have deep and tight integration between artificial intelligence and process industry, to achieve “smart process industry”.