Caparica, Lisabon, Portugal | July 26-29, 2011
- Self-X and Autonomous Control in Engineering Applications - Special Session on the 9th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics
Self-X and Autonomous Control
The increasing adoption of methods from computational intelligence, biologically inspired computing, and optimization in engineering disciplines such as mechatronics, production or logistics enables the development of a new class of autonomous systems. These systems often posses abilities which are best describe by the phrase Self-X: Self-Optimization, Self-Coordination, Self-Healing, Self-Repair and many more.
These properties have in common that they shift decision making from humans to the technical systems. This shift has two possible benefits. First, decision made during the design of the system can be delayed until operation and thus the system is able to react more flexible to different application requirements. Second, the human effort in managing such systems can be reduced and the corresponding systems are more cost-efficient. This special session is dedicated to this new type of Systems in the area of engineering applications.
Self-Optimizing Mechatronics - An Example of Autonomous Systems with Self-x Properties
The integration of mechanical engineering and information technology results in extensive potentials. This is expressed by the term “mechatronics”. This term refers to the symbiotic cooperation of mechanics, electronics, control engineering and software technology, in order to improve the behavior of a technical system. Future mechatronical systems encompass subsystems with inherent partial intelligence due to integrated micro processors. The behavior of the complete system will be characterized by communication and cooperation of intelligent subsystems. From the information technology point of view it is a distributed system of cooperating agents. This establishes fascinating possibilities for the design of mechatronical products of tomorrow. The term Self-optimization characterizes this perspective: Self-optimization of a technical system is the endogenous adaption of objectives as reaction to changing influences and the resulting autonomous adjustment of parameters or structure and consequently of the system‘s behavior. Thus Self-optimization is substantially beyond the well-known control and adaptation strategies; Self-optimization enables systems to act with inherent “intelligence”, to react independently and flexibly to changing operation conditions.
More information about self-optimizing mechatronic systems can be found at 
www.sfb614.de/en.
Workshop
This special session is dedicated to this new type of systems in the various engineering applications systems. The topic of systems with self‐x properties shall be discussed under three major headlines: application of self‐x and autonomous control, methods and algorithms for self‐x and autonomous control, and design methodologies for systems with self‐x properties.
Organizers
- Mareen Vaßholz
- Dr. Benjamin Klöpper
