An open distributed architecture for flexible hybrid assembly systems: a model-driven engineering approach.

Assembly systems constitute one of the most important fields in today's industry. The need for flexibility in the assembly process imposes several challenges in the development of this kind of systems. Model-driven engineering (MDE) has been successfully used to alleviate the complexity of platforms and express domain concepts effectively. In this paper, an open distributed architecture for the engineering of evolvable flexible hybrid assembly systems is described. The proposed architecture is based on the model-driven development paradigm. Models are used to represent in a formalized way the structure, the behavior, and the requirements of the assembly systems. A domain-specific engineering tool is defined to facilitate the assembly system engineer in the engineering process of assembly systems. Specific meta-models are defined to capture domain knowledge and guide the engineer in the construction of the models required to construct the assembly system. The proposed approach imposes a correct-by-construction approach and is based on an architecture that exploits the benefits of Cyber Physical paradigm utilizing web technologies, Internet of Things, and Cloud computing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]