Abstract:
Multi-agent systems (MAS) are used to increase flexibility and reliability of automated production plants, by reducing their control structure's rigidness through the use...Show MoreMetadata
Abstract:
Multi-agent systems (MAS) are used to increase flexibility and reliability of automated production plants, by reducing their control structure's rigidness through the use of autonomous, interacting software agents. This paper comprises a concept for MAS, which are implemented partly on the Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)-layer and partly on the field device layer, trying to combine the advantages found in other works that used MAS on only one of these layers. The concept contains a software architecture, a communication structure between different runtime platforms (MES and field devices) and processes, including an adaptive path finding algorithm. An evaluation showed that the proposed MAS is comparable in production performance, while increasing fault tolerance compared to a static legacy implementation.
Published in: Proceedings of 2012 IEEE 17th International Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation (ETFA 2012)
Date of Conference: 17-21 September 2012
Date Added to IEEE Xplore: 28 March 2013
ISBN Information: