RESEARCH IN PROGRESS

The Center for Automation and Intelligent Systems Research at Case Western Reserve University, founded in 1984, provides the setting and the administrative and funding mechanisms for coordinating and focusing the capabilities of faculty members and students from many disciplines and departments to deal with significant realworld problems encountered in the automation of production. The center serves as an interface between separate basic research efforts in the various disciplines and academic departments and the multidisciplinary group efforts needed to deal effectively with nontrivial real problems. The main focus of research at the center is on the effective integration of computer-based technologies that appear to be essential for the factory of the future. Thus, the scope of activities at the center is somewhat broader based than AI, but AI plays a central role in this integration because effective integration of complex systems requires intelligence. The major emphasis at the center is on industrial applications.