Welcome to the Intelligent Systems Division

The Intelligent Systems Division tackles the challenges posed in attaining a vision of the future by partnering with industry and academia to ensure that innovation in manufacturing systems is well-characterized and quantifiable (through development of a measurement science), open, extensible, and reconfigurable (through development of interoperability standards), as well as safe and secure (through industrial control network security standards). To target these challenges, our Division's work is organized into three programs:

The Measurement Science for Manufacturing Robotics and Automation Program provides means of characterizing, measuring, and assuring the performance of advances in technologies that make possible manufacture of higher quality and more complex parts and assemblies through predictable, well-characterized manufacturing equipment.

Flexible, reconfigurable manufacturing systems and model-based manufacturing require well-defined and rich information transfer, which is addressed by the Robotics and Automation Interoperability Standards Program.

The Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Control Systems and Network Standards Program responds to the need for safe, secure, and reliable manufacturing systems.

The Intelligent Systems Division is world-renowned for its accomplishments in development of measurement science, tools, and interoperability solutions for leading-edge mobile robots and other complex automation that has been applied to defense, transportation, and security. We continue to support other agencies in evaluating advanced technologies and also bring this core competence to bear in our work within the manufacturing domain.

More information about our Division

Federal and industry groups have specifically stressed the importance of innovation in robotics, manufacturing automation, and control systems for maintaining U. S. primacy in innovation and high-value-added manufacturing. The American Competitiveness Initiative (ACI) lists advancements in manufacturing as a key priority. The President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) has said that "the big winners ... will be those who develop talent, techniques, and tools so advanced that there is no competition" and warns that "where product cycles mature and the costs of labor come to dominate … the United States loses its competitive advantages." The National Academy of Engineering report on the Transformation of Manufacturing in the 21st Century articulates a vision in which "… parts can be produced, without tooling or programming, in a single, highly flexible production cell, thus eliminating the need for, or even the advantage of, scale, including volume scale." Smart systems, reconfigurable tools and systems, and sensors are among the eight "Categories of Innovative and Potentially Disruptive Advanced Manufacturing Technologies" documented by a National Council for Advance Manufacturing (NACFAM) Report. In particular, robotics holds tremendous untapped potential in manufacturing. A Robotics in Manufacturing Roadmap sponsored by Department of Energy (DOE) estimated that 90% of potential users have not yet adopted robotics. The same study found that manufacturers need robots that can be more "aware" of their environments and their workpieces so that they no longer require tremendous investments in highly controlled infrastructure, including safety zones for pedestal robots and guided pathways with no obstacles for mobile robots. A lack of adequate sensing of surroundings limits robots' ability to respond to any changes.

Target user communities lack means of specifying quantitatively what performance they need from a robot. Nor are there any means of objectively and reproducibly measuring how well robots or their components meet a given set of requirements. As robots and other manufacturing equipment become more flexible and adaptable, and work in closer unison with humans, safe operations become a paramount issue. As factory equipment becomes more tightly networked within the work cells1 as well as with external systems, security issues grow in importance. Our division seeks to address several key drivers and needs for U. S. manufacturing innovation and competitiveness. These include the increasing pace of technological change, which encompasses product and process innovation, as well as reduction in time to market, higher quality and better performance of customized products, increased productivity and reduced costs, and new safety and security challenges.