Call for papers: Visual Computing Challenges of Manufacturing and Making for Industry 4.0, Future Factories and New Foundries

Computer Graphics and Computer Vision, i.e. Visual Computing, will be key enabling technologies to design and implement smart and cognitive behavior in the product engineering and manufacturing as envisioned by the Advanced Manufacturing initiative.

Advanced Manufacturing – often referred to as ‘the fourth industrial revolution’ or Industry 4.0 in Europe or as Industrial Internet by US companies such as GE – is considered to be the next big game changer for industrial engineering and manufacturing. Propelled by the convergence of machines and intelligent data and the computational technologies for 3D printing, the “Maker” movement, robotics and advances in materials science (the Materials Genome Initiative) are creating new challenges and drive computer graphics and modeling research—taking graphics back to its CAD and Sketchpad roots. The (r)evolution in Industry 4.0 is being accelerated by the wide embrace of networking and Internet technology into traditional industries such as manufacturing shop floors aiming at cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) for Future Factories. Further, advances in additive manufacturing, modeling systems, physics-based simulation and the computational representation of materials (such as bio-materials, alloys, composites and polymers) has created a framework to enable new intelligent factories characterized by adaptability, resource efficiency and ergonomics. Future product designers will be able to exploit a changing environment in which clients increasingly ask for strong customization of products which requires highly flexible (mass-)production; in which products are design and fabricated out of a myriad of materials, both traditional materials as well as those based on new metallurgic and biological processes. Computer graphics, modeling and machine vision will play a key role in Industry 4.0 to put the human right into the spot.

The March 2015 issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications will focus on Challenges for Visual Computing in Manufacturing and Making. For this special issue, we solicit papers that authors believe present decisive contributions of Visual Computing to challenges in Industry 4.0, Future Factories and New Foundries. We appreciate contributions from both commercial and academic sources; from researchers as well as practitioners.

Final submissions due: 1 August 2014

We welcome papers on a variety of topics, including:

end-user UIs (multi-modal, immersive, web-based, etc.) for designing/customizing
products, i.e., end-user tools
interactive geometric 3D design and functional modeling for CPPS incl. new representation schemes facilitating self-aware virtual product and production definition, i.e., virtual engineering tools
virtual environments for testing self-configuration, i.e. production (re-)planning/ adaptation tools
representation of (and design with) advanced materials, including bio-materials, metals, composites, polymers, etc.
scene analysis and intention recognition (incl. semantics extraction) for worker machine collaboration (human machine interaction – HMI)
computer vision approaches for 3D reconstruction of dynamic processes on the shop floor to keep physical and virtual representation in sync, i.e. realizing continuous cyber-physical equivalence1
simulation approaches for supporting (local) decision making (incl. GPGPU approaches and in-situ simulation at machine level), simulation of process physics, material properties, etc.
visualization technique to communicate intention from machines to humans (new UX for workers, incl. augmented reality, mixed reality)
the role of “Big Data” from CPPS, for visual analytics, design reuse, archiving, long-term retention
studies of evaluating such technologies in Adv. Manufacturing/Industry 4.0 setups, the creation of new foundries and manufacturing facilities

Submission Guidelines

Articles should be no more than eight magazine pages, where a page is 800 words and a quarter-page image counts as 200 words. Please cite only the 12 most relevant references, and consider providing technical background in sidebars for non-expert readers. Color images are preferable and should be limited to 10. Visit the CG&A style and length guidelines at www.computer.org/portal/web/peerreviewmagazines/cga. We also strongly encourage you to submit multimedia (videos, podcasts, and soon) to enhance your article. Visit CG&A supplemental guidelines at:

www.computer.org/portal/web/peerreviewmagazines/accga#supplemental.

Please submit your paper using the online manuscript submission service at:

https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/cs-ieee

When uploading your paper, select the appropriate special-issue title under the category “Manuscript Type.” Also, include complete contact information for all authors. If you have any questions about submitting your article, contact the peer review coordinator at [email protected].

Questions?

Please direct any correspondence before submission to the guest editors:

Andre Stork: [email protected]
William Regli: [email protected]

Background information and Links