Smart additive manufacturing: Current artificial intelligence-enabled methods and future perspectives

Additive manufacturing (AM) has been increasingly used in production. Because of its rapid growth, the efficiency and robustness of AM-based product development processes should be improved. Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful tool that has outperformed humans in numerous complex tasks. AI-enabled intelligent agents can reduce the workforce required to scale up AM production and achieve higher resource utilization efficiency. This study provides an introduction of AI techniques. Then, the current development of AI-enabled AM product development is investigated. Existing intelligent agents are used for problems in product design, process design and production stages. Based on the review, current research gaps and future research directions are identified. To guide future development of more efficient and comprehensive intelligent agents, a smart AM framework based on cloud-edge computing is proposed. Global consideration can be realized in the cloud environment, and a fast response can be achieved at the edge nodes.