Cyber-Physical Systems for Micro-/Nano-assembly Operations: a Survey

Abstract Purpose of Review Latest requirements of the global market force manufacturing systems to a change for a new production paradigm (Industry 4.0). Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) appear as a solution to be deployed in different manufacturing fields, especially those with high added value and technological complexity, high product variants, and short time to market. In this sense, this paper aims at reviewing the introduction level of CPS technologies in micro/nano-manufacturing and how these technologies could cope with these challenging manufacturing requirements. Recent Findings The introduction of CPS is still in its infancy on many industrial applications, but it actually demonstrates its potential to support future manufacturing paradigm. However, only few research works in micro/nano-manufacturing considered CPS frameworks, since the concept barely appeared a decade ago. Summary Some contributions have revealed the potential of CPS technologies to improve manufacturing performance which may be scaled to the micro/nano-manufacturing. IoT-based frameworks with VR/AR technologies allow distributed and collaborative systems, or agent-based architectures with advance algorithm implementations that improve the flexibility and performance of micro-/nano-assembly operations. Future research of CPS in micro-/nano-assembly operations should be followed by more studies of its technical deployment showing its implications under other perspectives, i.e. sustainable, economic, and social point of views, to take full advance of all its features

A maturity model for the autonomy of manufacturing systems

Modern manufacturing has to cope with dynamic and changing circumstances. Market fluctuations, the effects caused by unpredictable material shortages, highly variable product demand, and worker availability all require system robustness, flexibility, and resilience. To adapt to these new requirements, manufacturers should consider investigating, investing in, and implementing system autonomy. Autonomy is being adopted in multiple industrial contexts, but divergences arise when formalizing the concept of autonomous systems. To develop an implementation of autonomous manufacturing systems, it is essential to specify what autonomy means, how autonomous manufacturing systems are different from other autonomous systems, and how autonomous manufacturing systems are identified and achieved through the main features and enabling technologies. With a comprehensive literature review, this paper provides a definition of autonomy in the manufacturing context, infers the features of autonomy from different engineering domains, and presents a five-level model of autonomy — associated with maturity levels for the features — to ensure the complete identification and evaluation of autonomous manufacturing systems. The paper also presents the evaluation of a real autonomous system that serves as a use-case and a validation of the model