Future industrial systems can be realized using the cyber-physical systems (CPSs) that advocate the coexistence of cyber and physical counterparts in a network structure to perform the system's functions in a collaborative manner. Multiagent systems share common ground with CPSs and can empower them with a multitude of capabilities in their efforts to achieve complexity management, decentralization, intelligence, modularity, flexibility, robustness, adaptation, and responsiveness. This work surveys and analyzes the current state of the industrial application of agent technology in CPSs, and provides a vision on the way agents can effectively enable emerging CPS challenges.

Industrial agents (IAs) [1] are multiagentbased systems (MASs) [2] that, for many years, have been advocated as a promising and realistic solution for an emerging set of industrial challenges. In the past, MASs fell into the scope of enterprise agility [3]-[8], and now, more than ever, pertain to the industrial digital transformation and sustainability spheres. MAS technology is being applied to several industrial applications in the cyber-physical system (CPS) context, namely, in smart production, smart electric grids, smart logistics, and smart health care [9]. To understand the future potential of IAs, one must first have a sufficiently concise view of the past and present efforts, i.e., understand their early applications and current directions. Such a view is necessary because, over the last decades, the concept of the IA has proven to be a bit of a moving target, adjusting to the needs, visions, and technologies of each era.

The concept of Industry 4.0, or the Fourth Industrial Revolution, has the potential for radically increased system reconfigurability and flexibility. At its core, the notion of cyber-physical system, as the new generation of embedded systems with advanced artificial intelligence and improved communication capabilities, is seen as the key enabling concept that will render production activities more sustainable. The cyber-physical conceptualization dramatically reduces the integration effort by virtually eliminating the need, time, and cost for reprogramming. However, there are still important challenges that need to be addressed before one can start to design cyber-physical production systems consistently. These intertwine and are not as easily solvable as the popular science descriptions may suggest. This paper brings them forward and develops a critical comparative analysis between today’s automation solutions and their potential cyber-physical counterparts. The analysis considers the technical and conceptual challenges that are included in the process of migrating today’s, mostly bespoke, automation solutions to highly modularized, dynamic, and interactive cyber-physical production systems (CPPSs). In this context, this paper considers the interplay between form and function of industrial components, at the light of their cyber-physical formulation. At the same time, it addresses the system-level (de)composability and interaction design challenges that arise from the integration of modular CPPSs.