IDEAS: Instanty Deployable Evolvable Assembly Systems

The IDEAS consortium aims at developing a demonstrator/technological solution that proves that assembly equipment can be highly adaptable. Such a step will be based on the further development of the Evolvable Assembly Systems (EAS) paradigm, and its integration with the results of other EC projects (IPROMS, SOCRADES, EUPASS). EAS is now an established paradigm , and previous projects (EUPASS, A3) have demonstrated that process-oriented assembly modules may be effectively re-used if applied with distributed control systems: EAS allows the development of adaptive modules for each individual assembly process. In principle this is possible as it was proven in the laboratories of Schneider, Masmec, and Festo. However, this needs to be combined with real-time adaptability and advanced control solutions in order to attain self-learning and self-diagnosing systems: true adaptability. These IDEAS objectives go well beyond what is commercially exploitable today. To achieve this, IDEAS is designed to work on respective components with intrinsic machine intelligence, on adaptive control and on control architecture.