Fundamentals of the philosophy of technology. Product as the materialisation of an idea. Evolution of the production systems. Development line: classic manufacturing systems - flexible manufacturing systems - intelligent manufacturing systems. Development line of product design. Intelligent manufacturing: system components, architecture and data flow, system operations. Flexible machining and assembly systems. Process planning for flexibel assembly systems. Design of products for automated assembly. Design of parts for automated assembly. Learning and machine learning. Scheduling: philosophy, strategies, models and algorithms. Knowledge - based system. Introduction to Artificial Life. Main characteristics of life (Pattern in spacetime; Self-production; Information storage of a selfrepresentation; A metabolism; Functional interactions with the environment; Interdependence of parts; Stability under perturbations; The ability to evolve.) Biological inspired Manufacturing Systems. Self-organisation. The principle concepts of ALife which are applicable to the engineering field. ALife and automatic evolution of complexity, self-organization. Emergence of intelligence without explicit design. ALife and next (r)evolution of engineering. Emergent processes, and a dynamic embodiment with the environment.
