Cognitive Automation and its Impact on Additive Manufacturing

Published

October 15, 2020

Author(s)

Albert T. Jones, Zhuo Yang, Yan Lu

Abstract

The English word manufacturing firstly appeared in 1683 and it was derived from Latin manu factus, meaning making by hand. For more than thousands of years now, and four Industrial Revolutions, the physical, and mostly mechanical processes, associated with making things have evolved substantially. That evolution, which we call physical automation, essentially changes manufacturing from making-by-humans hand only to making-by-machine only. A similar evolution is happening with the cognitive processes that happen before (design), during (control) and even after (inspection), the actual making (manufacturing) can begin. We call that evolution cognitive automation. In this paper, we provide a history of both physical and cognitive automation. That history evolves based on summaries of the four industrial Revolutions. The focus of this paper is on the current state of cognitive automation associated with controlling Additive Manufacturing processes. We focus specifically on how cognitive automation has changed the control of those processes.

Citation

Evolutions in Mechanical Engineering

Volume

3

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Cognitive Automation, AI, Additive Manufacturing

Citation

Jones, A. , Yang, Z. and Lu, Y. (2020), Cognitive Automation and its Impact on Additive Manufacturing, Evolutions in Mechanical Engineering, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=931090 (Accessed October 11, 2025)