Summary and Outlook

Abstract

The increasing development of information and communication technology enables mechatronic systems with inherent partial intelligence, so called self-optimizing systems. Their behavior is formed by the communication and cooperation of intelligent system elements. Self-optimization describes the endogenous adaptation of the system’s objectives due to changing operation conditions and the resulting autonomous adjustment of the system’s behavior. Self-optimization therefore opens up fascinating prospects for the development of future mechatronic systems, which meet the increasing requirements on such systems. At the same time the development of self-optimizing systems sets new requirements on the design methodology, due to the involvement of different domains such as mechanical, electrical/ electronic, control, software engineering and experts from higher mathematics and artificial intelligence. This leads to an increasing design complexity and requires an effective cooperation and communication between the developers. The approach of the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 614 for the development of self-optimizing systems presented in this book, overcomes the shortcomings of the existing design methodologies. It provides a design methodology consisting of a reference process, tools and methods. It makes the self-optimization specific expertise available for the developers and enables them to develop these systems independently.