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Evaluating the Applicability of Multi-agent Software for Implementing Distributed Industrial Data Management Approaches

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Service Orientation in Holonic and Multi-agent Manufacturing

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 594))

Abstract

Distributed approaches to industrial control or information management problems are often tackled using Multi-agent methods. Multi-Agent systems—solutions resulting from taking a Multi-agent based approaches—often come with a certain amount of “overhead” such as communication systems, but can provide a helpful tool with the design and implementation. In this paper, a distributed data management problem is addressed with both a bespoke approach developed specifically for this problem and a more general Multi-agent approach. The two approaches are compared using architecture and software metrics. The software metric results show similar results, although overall the bespoke approach was more appropriate for the particular application examined. The architectural analysis indicates that the main reason for this difference is the communication and computation overhead associated with the agent-based system. It was not within the scope of this study to compare the two approaches under multiple application scenarios.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Torben Jess, Philip Woodall & Duncan McFarlane

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  1. Torben Jess
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  2. Philip Woodall
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  3. Duncan McFarlane
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Correspondence to Torben Jess .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Automatic Control and Applied Informatics, University Politehnica of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Theodor Borangiu

  2. Research Centre for Automatic Control, Nancy University, Epinal, France

    André Thomas

  3. LAMIH UMR CNRS 8201, UVHC, Valenciennes, France

    Damien Trentesaux

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Jess, T., Woodall, P., McFarlane, D. (2015). Evaluating the Applicability of Multi-agent Software for Implementing Distributed Industrial Data Management Approaches. In: Borangiu, T., Thomas, A., Trentesaux, D. (eds) Service Orientation in Holonic and Multi-agent Manufacturing. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 594. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15159-5_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15159-5_19

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15159-5

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