GECKO - Generic Evolutionary Control Knowledge-based Module

The GECKO project proposes an adaptive control infrastructure based on control modules named GECKO Generic Evolutionary Control Knowledge-based mOdule. The production environment is modelled as a community of autonomous, self-declaring, heterarchically collaborating GECKO modules encapsulated in the physical mechatronic equipment. GECKO gathers the information from the environment, reproduces an abstraction of the shopfloor and interprets the production dynamics. This allows evaluating, configuring and tuning the Gecko capabilities on the requirements by automatically activating the control functions and implementing resource production and energy efficiency optimization strategies over time. Gecko software infrastructure is conceived as a number of interoperable components representing the Gecko skills (communication, recognition, capability assessment, control and optimization). The Gecko benefits will be demonstrated in the field of re-manufacturing of electronic components.

GECKO has been approved within the line of research on Evolutionary and Reconfigurable Factory in the Factory of the Future National flagship program. Such part of the program promotes dynamic production contexts characterized by evolving demand and technologies requiring factories co-evolving together with products and processes in en efficient and profitable way.

The topic addressed by the project GECKO has been selected by NSERC-Automotive Partnership Canada in order to be included in the “Concurrent Call on Automotive Manufacturing R&D”, which was launched within the bilateral cooperation agreement signed by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the National Research Council of Italy (CNR) (Memorandum of Understanding for Scholarly and Scientific Cooperation). This agreement aims at promoting cooperation between Italian and Canadian researchers through the financing of joint cooperation projects.