Special Issue "Advances and Challenges in Manufacturing Automation"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Valeriy Vyatkin
Institute for Manufacturing, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, 17 Charles Babbage Road, Cambridge, CB3 0FS, UK
Website: http://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/people/vv263/
E-Mail: vv263@cam.ac.uk
Interests: software for automation; distributed systems; programmable logic control; intelligent automation; flexible reconfigurable systems; smart machines

Dear Colleagues,

Manufacturing automation has gone through several technological revolutions, currently being highly information intensive and software driven. The new frontiers are faced for example at the macro scale integration and nano scale operation, in the design complexity and costs and energy limitations, as well in coexistence of fully automated and manual operations. The purpose of this special issue is to reflect the state of the art in challenges faced by automation systems developers and present the most important and relevant advances to overcome the challenges.

This special issue invites papers that cover the following topics of interest (but not limited to these):

• Computation and communication challenges of manufacturing automation
• System engineering concepts
• Pervasive sensing, monitoring and decision making infrastructures
• Novel software architectures for automation
• Decentralised control concepts
• Intelligent machines and smart mechatronic components
• Asset management, intelligent products, track and trace
• Knowledge management in automation
• Dependability, safety and security
• Modelling, verification and validation of automation systems
• Energy-aware green automation
• Emerging automation concepts

Position papers and state of the art reviews are especially welcome.

Prof. Dr. Valeriy Vyatkin
Guest Editor

Submission

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Machines is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. For the first couple of issues the Article Processing Charge (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts.