Intelligent User Interface in Cloud Manufacturing

The idea of cloud manufacturing is gradually transforming the way enterprises do business in this age of globalization. The development of cloud manufacturing is closely linked to domain specific users in manufacturing industry. The huge amount of users with diverse roles and various requirements in manufacturing industry will face great challenges of cloud system usability problems. Thus user interface issues play important roles in this new area. Current research on cloud manufacturing pays more attention to internal cloud while makes light of external end-users’ usability, i.e. user interface issues. In this paper we discuss the key characteristics of Intelligent User Interface (IUI) for cloud manufacturing, i.e., naturality, smart mobility, self-configuration, and flexible customization. Further, a cloud-plus-IUI model for cloud end-users is presented. Then we discuss the enabling technologies, i.e., automatic configuration based on virtualization, context-aware adaption and recommendation, and multimodal interaction.Copyright © 2014 by ASME