Deployment of an ontology-based agent architecture on a controller

Multi-agent systems have proven to be a powerful technology for improving flexibility and agility in a complex manufacturing environment. In such systems, an ontology is a crucial element for knowledge representation of the external environment or the agent's domain of application as well as for ensuring interoperability between agents. The agent's decision component uses this world representation to coordinate the global behavior of the agent and delegate specific tasks. The placement of the agent's decision part on a controller brings improvements in scalability, reconfigurability as well as less dependency from human intervention. In this paper we describe an important step needed to be done by excluding the unnecessary GUIs and by directly connecting the used software tools in order to place the entire framework on an embedded controller.

[1]  Paul Valckenaers Challenges of Next Generation Manufacturing Systems , 2004, SoftSpez Final Report.

[2]  José Barata,et al.  A Multiagent Control System for Shop Floor Assembly , 2007, HoloMAS.

[3]  Stefan Bussmann,et al.  An agent-based approach to the control of flexible production systems , 2001, ETFA 2001. 8th International Conference on Emerging Technologies and Factory Automation. Proceedings (Cat. No.01TH8597).

[4]  D. M. Hutton,et al.  Multiagent Systems for Manufacturing Control A Design Methodology , 2006 .

[5]  Francisco P. Maturana,et al.  Agent virtual machine for automation controllers , 2008 .

[6]  Hermann Kaindl,et al.  An automation agent architecture with a reflective world model in manufacturing systems , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.

[7]  José L. Martínez Lastra,et al.  Semantic web services in factory automation: fundamental insights and research roadmap , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

[8]  Shane Xie,et al.  Agent technology for collaborative process planning: a review , 2007 .

[9]  José L. Martínez Lastra,et al.  Messaging Performance of FIPA Interaction Protocols in Networked Embedded Controllers , 2008, EURASIP J. Embed. Syst..

[10]  Kenwood H. Hall,et al.  Experience with Holonic and Agent-Based Control Systems and Their Adoption by Industry , 2005, HoloMAS.

[11]  Henrik Eriksson,et al.  Using JessTab to Integrate Protégé and Jess , 2003, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[12]  Rajiv Kishore,et al.  Enterprise integration using the agent paradigm: foundations of multi-agent-based integrative business information systems , 2006, Decis. Support Syst..

[13]  Wilfried Lepuschitz,et al.  Integration of a heterogeneous Low Level Control in a multi-agent system for the manufacturing domain , 2009, 2009 IEEE Conference on Emerging Technologies & Factory Automation.

[14]  W.A. Woods,et al.  Important issues in knowledge representation , 1986, Proceedings of the IEEE.

[15]  Kenwood H. Hall,et al.  Distributed multi-agent architecture for automation systems , 2004, Expert Syst. Appl..

[16]  J. Peschke Real-time Java for industrial controls in flexible manufacturing systems , 2003, IEEE International Conference on Industrial Informatics, 2003. INDIN 2003. Proceedings..

[17]  Thomas R. Gruber,et al.  A translation approach to portable ontology specifications , 1993, Knowl. Acquis..

[18]  Weiming Shen,et al.  Agent-based distributed manufacturing process planning and scheduling: a state-of-the-art survey , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part C (Applications and Reviews).

[19]  Paulo Leitão,et al.  Agent-based distributed manufacturing control: A state-of-the-art survey , 2009, Eng. Appl. Artif. Intell..

[20]  James H. Christensen,et al.  HMS/FB Architecture and its Implementation , 2003 .

[21]  Carlos Eduardo Pereira,et al.  Manufacturing plant control: Challenges and issues , 2007 .

[22]  Agostino Poggi,et al.  JADE - A Java Agent Development Framework , 2005, Multi-Agent Programming.

[23]  Michal Pechoucek,et al.  Industrial deployment of multi-agent technologies: review and selected case studies , 2008, Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems.

[24]  Wilfried Lepuschitz,et al.  Application of a communication interface between agents and the low level control , 2000, 2009 4th International Conference on Autonomous Robots and Agents.

[25]  Volodymyr Vasyutynskyy,et al.  Software Agents in Industry: A Customized Framework in Theory and Praxis , 2009, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.