SS on Smart Agents and Cyber-Physical Systems for Future Industrial Systems to be published in the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics

Agent technology is a promising approach to address the challenge of developing systems that exhibit better re-configurability, robustness and responsiveness, by introducing an alternative way to design control systems based on the decentralization of control functions over distributed autonomous and cooperative entities, being the overall control achieved by the cooperation among these entities. In parallel, the emerging concept of Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) promises a breakthrough in achieving interoperability, flexibility and reconfigurability of devices and systems, being capable of seamless reconfiguration and more efficient in productivity and energy consumption. The combination of agent technology and CPS principles will support the realization of the Industrie 4.0 vision that aims the computerization of traditional industries to achieve intelligent and reconfigurable factories.
The main objective of this Special Section is to explore the topics of agent-based and CPS in industrial systems and applications. Of particular importance is the collection of the best practices, results and knowledge from experiments of industrial applications, deployment methodologies, standards, demonstrations and roadmaps that will help the industry assess the application of agent technology and CPS. Topics of interest of this Special Section include, but are not limited to:
- Architectures and theoretical foundations of CPS.
- CPS design, modelling, simulation and evaluation.
- Integration of complementary technologies, such as multi-agent systems, service-oriented architectures, wireless sensor networks and cloud technologies.
- Distributed, self-organized agent-based collaborative systems.
- Robustness, adaptation, reconfiguration, self-organization and other self-* properties in CPS.
- Privacy, security and trust in CPS.
- Industrial applications of agent-based systems and CPS.
- CPS for Industrie 4.0.
- Applications of big data analytics using agent technology in industrial systems.
- Analysis and validation of CPS agent based systems.
- Standardization issues in CPS.
Papers discussing industrial case studies and new application areas are especially welcome.

Manuscript Preparation and Submission
Follow the guidelines in “Information for Authors” in the IEEE Transaction on Industrial Informatics http://tii.ieee-ies.org/
Please submit your manuscript in electronic form through Manuscript Central web site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tii. On the submitting page #1 in popup menu of manuscript type, select: SS on Smart Agents and Cyber-Physical Systems for Future Industrial Systems

Submissions to this Special Section must represent original material that has been neither submitted to, nor published in, any other journal. Extended versions of papers previously published in conference proceedings may be eligible for consideration if conditions listed in http://tii.ieee-ies.org/o/PC.pdf are fulfilled. Before submitting manuscript check the review criteria (http://tii.ieee-ies.org/o/RC.pdf) and other information (http://tii.ieee-ies.org/o/DI.pdf)

Note: The recommended papers for the section are subject to final approval by the Editor-in-Chief. Some papers may be published outside the special section, at the EIC discretion.

Timetable:
Deadline for manuscript submissions July 31, 2015
Expected publication date (tentative) May, 2016

Guest Editors:
Paulo Leitão, Polytechnic Institute of Bragança, Portugal, tel: +351.273303065, fax: +351.273313051, pleitao@ipb.pt
Jay Lee, University of Cincinnati, US, tel: +513 556-2493, jay.lee@uc.edu
Luís Ribeiro, Linköping University, Sweden, tel: +46.700850630, luis.ribeiro@liu.se