Industrial experiences, trends and future requirements on agent-based intelligent automation

The integration of both, the "agent-based manufacturing automation" and the "intelligent manufacturing system" paradigms is currently presented as the principal basis for making the intelligent automation of manufacturing systems an industrial reality. The concept of "agent" associated with production units, i.e., hardware and/or mechatronics components, is recognized by theoreticians and practitioners as "physical agent or production agent", which is closely related to the holonic manufacturing paradigm, developed during the last decade. This paper presents an overview of the latest results reported about the industrial application of this new emerging "intelligent automation technology". As one result of different industrial automation roadmaps, and taking into consideration the experience reported by the authors and other producers of automation systems, a set of challenges for future intelligent automation systems is first presented. These challenges can be met only if key enabling technologies (KET) are developed, optimized and/or adapted. This work addresses some of these KETs, and then it discusses and summarizes a set of technology research initiatives (TRI) that have to be started to support the development of the addressed KETs. Finally, a group of technology standardization initiatives (TSI) associated with the KETs is proposed, which complete the set of future requirements on the main subject of this report, i.e., agent-based intelligent automation.

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