  In the past decade, society has experienced notable growth in a variety of
technological areas. However, the Fourth Industrial Revolution has not been
embraced yet. Industry 4.0 imposes several challenges which include the
necessity of new architectural models to tackle the uncertainty that open
environments represent to cyber-physical systems (CPS). Waste Electrical and
Electronic Equipment (WEEE) recycling plants stand for one of such open
environments. Here, CPSs must work harmoniously in a changing environment,
interacting with similar and not so similar CPSs, and adaptively collaborating
with human workers. In this paper, we support the Distributed Adaptive Control
(DAC) theory as a suitable Cognitive Architecture for managing a recycling
plant. Specifically, a recursive implementation of DAC (between both
single-agent and large-scale levels) is proposed to meet the expected demands
of the European Project HR-Recycler. Additionally, with the aim of having a
realistic benchmark for future implementations of the recursive DAC, a
micro-recycling plant prototype is presented.
