Intelligent, Open Architecture Controller using Knowledge Server

In an ideal scenario of intelligent machine tools [22] the human mechanist was almost replaced by the controller. During the last decade many efforts have been made to get closer to this ideal scenario, but the way of information processing within the CNC did not change too much. The paper summarizes the requirements of an intelligent CNC evaluating the different research efforts done in this field using different artificial intelligence (AI) methods. The need for open CNC architecture was emerging at many places around the world. The second part of the paper introduces and shortly compares these efforts. In the third part a low cost concept for intelligent and open systems named Knowledge Server for Controllers (KSC) is introduced. It allows more devices to solve their intelligent processing needs using the same server that is capable to process intelligent data. In the final part the KSC concept is used in an open CNC environment to build up some elements of an intelligent CNC. The preliminary results of the implementation are also introduced.