Cyber Factories – Intelligent and Secure Factories of the Future

Dear Colleagues,

The digitalization of production is often described as being another industrial revolution, with a tremendous impact on our lives as members of the workforce and as consumers. With the increase of distributed connected devices and the so-called industrial internet of things (IIoT), factories are facing a digital transformation that brings challenges concerning their efficiency, security and safety. The paradigm is now based on the transaction of data rather than on the transaction of goods. Any connected device, whether from the shop floor or remotely from third parties, despite the valuable data from the optimization and business point of view, needs to be considered as a risk.

Data collected from different sources and domains feeds data lakes, which—if properly exploited through artificial intelligence techniques—can effectively contribute to process optimization, including predictive manufacturing, and bring new data-centered business opportunities. At the same time, artificial intelligence techniques can also be employed to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber incidents. Moreover, a combination of cyber and physical breaches brings complex attack scenarios that can only be mitigated with a holistic view of security, with different techniques but covering all of the cyber security life-cycle.

Another challenge in the factories of the future is the way human–machine interactions are changing from a context where humans operate machines to the one where humans and robots collaborate. An environment with a straight collaboration between humans and robots will benefit from methodologies that can monitor human and machine behavior and adapt both to operate safely.

The aim of this Special Issue is to provide a forum for the dissemination of works in which academics and industrial practitioners discuss the opportunities and threats of the factories of the future, and how artificial intelligence can impact on them.

Prof. Dr. Isabel Praça
Guest Editor

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