Adaptive Autonomous Machines - Requirements and Challenges Lothar Hotz 1 and Stephanie von Riegen 2 and Rainer Herzog 3 and Matthias Riebisch 4 and Markus Kiele-Dunsche 5 Abstract. In mechanical and plant engineering, the general chal- lenge is to achieve flexibility in order to process changes in the re- quirements or operating conditions of a machine on the site of the plant operator. Changes to the machine and its configuration require the operator to work together with the machine builder (or plant con- structor for several machines) and, if necessary, with his suppliers, which requires time and effort due to communication and delivery routes. Hence, an autonomous acting machine or component that deal with needed changes through automatically triggered adaptations would facilitate this process. In this paper, subtasks for construct- ing autonomous adaptive machines are identified and discussed. The underlying assumption is that changes of machines and components can be supported through configuration technologies because those handle variability and supply automatic derivation methods for com- puting needed changes in terms of machine and component updates. 1 INTRODUCTION In recent years, the demand for the industrial production of small quantities has increased steadily. Whereas in the past larger industrial plants were designed for the production of large quantities of exactly one product whose parameters did not change, today the possibility of fast, flexible adaptation to changes in product lines is becoming in- creasingly important. While an adjustment of the machine settings is often sufficient for minor changes, larger adjustments require a mod- ification of a machine by the machine manufacturer, or even changes of a complete production plant. For this purpose, the dependencies of individual plant components must be taken into account, e.g., the use of a stronger motor at one point would possibly also require the use of a drive shaft that can withstand higher torques. If individual plant modules can be configured to give a higher or lower speed, instead of a higher throughput other modules could be enabled to achieve a higher accuracy. In this paper, we present first considerations for enabling machines or components to themselves start adaptations of their configurations. Firstly, we discuss the current process in plant engineering for adapt- ing machines (Section 2). In Section 3, we provide an illustrating example and in Section 4, we present our concept for autonomous adapting machines and in Section 5, we discuss main challenges for 1 University of Hamburg, Germany, email: hotz@informatik.uni-hamburg.de 2 HITeC, University of Hamburg, Germany, email: stephanie.von.riegen@informatik.uni-hamburg.de 3 HITeC, University of Hamburg, Germany, email: herzog@informatik.uni- hamburg.de 4 University of Hamburg, Germany, email: riebisch@informatik.uni- hamburg.de 5 Lenze GmbH, Germany, email: Markus.Kiele-Dunsche@lenze.com realizing such machines, especially in respect to configuration tasks such as reconfiguration. 2 CURRENT SITUATION IN PLANT ENGINEERING The component manufacturer has developed products whose prod- uct features can be configured in a variety of ways to cover a wide range of missions [7]. For a power unit, such product characteristics are: Torque, rotary speed, type of sensors, type of actuator, mechani- cal interfaces, electrical interfaces, control characteristics, functional characteristics, but also something basic like color. These have to be considered as drive systems, which in some cases have to be un- derstood as poly systems, since there are central components, such as the power supply, or a controller, which specifies a coordinated movement, such as in robot kinematics. The interactions between the power unit components of a drive axle or a drive system, starting with the connection to the control system up to the driven components or the mechanics, can be very extensive, so that the machine builder is dependent on the knowledge of the component or solution supplier. The development of suitable drive solutions is therefore usually carried out in close cooperation these days. On the other hand, machine builders want to reuse their developed results wherever possible, which forces them to modular- ize their machine solutions. Machine modules are then defined which combine one or more drive axes or drive systems. A general overview of the current plant engineering process is given in Figure 1. After the mission and the classification of the client’s requirements, a concept is created that may include exist- ing solutions. Requirements for such solutions can be functional (movements, production steps) and constructive characteristics (di- mensions, interfaces such as connecting elements etc.). When decid- ing on a solution, various aspects have to be taken into account. Some lead to severe restrictions, others are free, and still others have con- sequences for other solutions or components. If automation or partial solutions are available (selction of partial or automation solutions), these can be integrated into a machine solution. Integration refers to function, design, parameterization, wiring, but also to organizational issues such as spare parts inventory and documentation. The planned mechanical design can be verified by means of a simulation (simula- tion). Once a decision has been made on an overall solution, the elec- trical, pneumatic and hydraulic design (construction) is carried out. This is incorporated into the development of machine control and op- eration and can be put into operation virtually (virtual commission- ing). After the customer has placed his order (order and logistics) on the designed solution, the montage and initial commissioning with Copyright © 2019 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).