IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics : Special Section on: Industrial Agents: Concepts, Technologies, and Applications

Rapid technology advances combined with the increasing digitalization bring new opportunities but also put new challenges to modern industrial systems. Software agents can be used to address the multi-angled needs of envisioned Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS) in several domains e.g. in manufacturing, smart cities, energy, logistics, etc. To do so, their interplay in industrial settings needs to be better understood and assessed from a holistic viewpoint that includes technical as well as business aspects. Such directions put forward an interdisciplinary area of research that takes advantage of the latest advances in artificial intelligence, ICPS, software agents, communication technologies, enterprise integration, etc. and utilizes them to address complex requirements stemming from the need for high digitalization, cooperativeness, performance, and agility. The latter increasingly include the technological directions in conjunction with socioeconomic and business angles that need to be integrated from the beginning at design and not only as an afterthought in products, services, and infrastructures. Aspects pertinent to the digital transformation as well as the success of Industrial Agents e.g. user-centered design, cost, training, human-to-machine intelligent collaboration, workplace satisfaction, ergonomics and safety, lifelong learning, need to be factored in. This special section aims to cover key aspects in the area of software agents and their industrial applicability, that covers technologies, design, development, deployment, maintenance, experimentation with agent-based systems.