The intelligent machine

The concept of using condition monitoring (CM) to monitor automated small batch production equipment is now rapidly gaining ground in manufacturing industry due, in the main, to the wide availability of powerful and highly reliable electronic sensing systems, together with advances in computer technology and its associated software. Real time actual condition knowledge or RTACK data, obtained and analysed automatically during the production process, permits the application of many concepts which underpin the methodologies of both condition monitoring and artificial intelligence (AI). These, when used together, have the potential to allow a machine to exhibit intelligence, in the sense that it can be made aware of its environment/health and allowed to adaptively control one to the benefit of the other. The author outlines developments within condition monitoring applied to machining systems, exploring the development of automated, intelligent and unstaffed machining systems