Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPAArtificial Intelligence (AI) and its subfield Machine Learning (ML) will fundamentally change industrial manufacturing and take it to a new level. These technologies have the potential to increase not only the degree of automation but also the capacities and quality of a production while decreasing costs at the same time.
Combined with powerful sensors and high computing capacities, the growing digitization and networking of manufacturing equipment in the context of Industry 4.0 have created the necessary conditions for using AI in industry. Applications range from process monitoring in machining processes, complex assembly processes - with high product variants or quality requirements - right through to operations with extensive time delays, such as in glass production. Thanks to AI, an industrial robot can learn autonomously, for example in a simulative environment or by imitation, and generate and subsequently execute its own program.
