Reliable Self-Learning Production Systems Based on Context Aware Services

The paper presents the key results of the EU-project Self-Learning. The strategic objective of Self-Learning is to strengthen EU leadership in production technologies in the global marketplace by developing innovative self-learning solutions to enable tight integration of control & so called secondary processes (e.g. maintenance, energy efficiency) of production systems. The project developed highly reliable and secure service-based self-learning solutions aiming at that integration. Approaches based on SOA principles, using distributed networked embedded services in device space, are the most appropriate for implementation of such self-learning solutions. Context awareness, providing information about the processes & equipment and circumstances under which the services operate and allowing them to react accordingly, is a promising holistic approach to assure needed self-learning adaptation to changes in processes and equipment states. The key components of a self-learning solution include a Context Extractor module to allow for dynamic context extraction, processing and storage, an Adapter module to allow for a holistic process control of considered systems and a self-learning module to allow for self-learning. Three industrial application scenarios drive the project.