Semantic technologies: latest advances in agent-based manufacturing control systems

The manuscript reports on the latest advancements in the field of multi-agent based industrial control systems. It is declared that this area is becoming strongly influenced by the recent massive proliferation of semantic technologies in various fields of software engineering. The application of ontologies for expressing semantics of data does not restrict any longer exclusively on semantic web or semantic web services. Ontologies are being applied for advanced handling, exchanging and reasoning about knowledge in the area of industrial automation, especially in the case of production systems based on multi-agent technology. The paper provides a comprehensive survey of the application of ontologies in agent-based control systems and discusses the common characteristics of such integration. The generic ontology designed for discrete manufacturing, which covers ordering, production planning and material handling aspects is presented. In addition, the framework for integration of this ontology in distributed, agent-based control solutions is given. A proof-of-concept demonstrating the advantages and drawbacks of such integration in a real manufacturing scenario is provided.

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