Abstract
The rising number of product variants requires flexible manufacturing systems, including their internal material flow systems (MFSs). An approach to design MFSs reconfigurably is the use of a decentralized control based on software agents. For implementing an agent-based control approach for MFSs this paper presents a meta model describing the knowledge base of individual agents and the overall control task to be fulfilled by the MFS.
Zusammenfassung
Die steigende Anzahl an Produktvarianten erfordert flexible Fertigungs- und innerbetriebliche Materialflusssysteme (MFSs). Ein Ansatz um MFSs rekonfigurierbar zu gestalten, ist die Verwendung einer dezentralen Steuerung mit Software Agenten. Zur Umsetzung des Agentenansatzes für MFSs wird in diesem Beitrag ein Metamodell vorgestellt, welches das Wissen der einzelnen Agenten sowie das angestrebte Steuerungsziel beschreibt.
Funding source: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Award Identifier / Grant number: VO 937/24-1
Funding statement: We would like to thank the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) for funding parts of this work (VO 937/24-1).
About the authors
Juliane Fischer, M. Sc., graduated in mechanical engineering from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in 2017. She is a research assistant at the Institute of Automation and Information Systems at TUM. Her main research interests are the design of modular, reusable control software and flexible material flow systems in automated production systems.
Prof. Marga Marcos graduated in electrical engineering and received the PhD in control engineering at the University of the Basque Country in 1988. She is professor in Automatic Control and Systems Engineering at the University of the Basque Country, where she was chairman of the Automatic Control and Systems Engineering Department for more than ten years. Her research interests include model-based design of distributed automation and embedded systems and real-time control of manufacturing and robotic systems.
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Birgit Vogel-Heuser graduated in electrical engineering and received the Ph. D. in mechanical engineering from the RWTH Aachen in 1991. She worked for nearly ten years in industrial automation in the machine and plant manufacturing industry. After holding different chairs of automation she has been head of the Institute of Automation and Information Systems at the Technical University of Munich since 2009. Her research work is focused on modeling and education in automation engineering for distributed and intelligent systems.
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