Reconfigurable Assembly Approach for Wind Turbines Using Multiple Intelligent Agents

This paper investigates the use of an agent based assembly strategy for a wind turbine hub. The manual assembly procedure for a wind turbine is presented. The hub parts are constantly optimised and therefore a fully automated assembly line requires continously reprogramming. Thus, a new reconfigurable assembly system is introduced which is flexible and self-adaptive. The methodology of implementing an intelligent agent for designing the assembly strategy for the wind generator hub and the algorithm for the optimal task sequence are described. This reconfigurable automation runs a Partial Order Planning algorithm in real-time using Beckhoff TwinCAT® 3.

[1]  Michael Sharpe.  Robotic Fabrication of Wind Turbine Power Generators , 2009 .

[2]  Zhe Chen,et al.  Design optimization and site matching of direct-drive permanent magnet wind power generator systems , 2009 .

[3]  Ramesh C. Bansal,et al.  Wind Energy Resources: Theory, Design and Applications , 2011 .

[4]  Cristiano Castelfranchi,et al.  Guarantees for Autonomy in Cognitive Agent Architecture , 1995, ECAI Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages.

[5]  Yoram Koren,et al.  Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems , 2003 .

[6]  Rogério de Lemos,et al.  Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems [outcome of a Dagstuhl Seminar] , 2009, Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems.

[7]  Peyman Oreizy,et al.  An architecture-based approach to self-adaptive software , 1999, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[8]  Mary Shaw,et al.  Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems: A Research Roadmap , 2009, Software Engineering for Self-Adaptive Systems.

[9]  Yoram Koren,et al.  Design of reconfigurable manufacturing systems , 2010 .

[10]  K. H. Solangi,et al.  A review on global wind energy policy , 2010 .

[11]  S. Iniyan,et al.  A review of wind energy technologies , 2007 .

[12]  Ezio Sesto,et al.  Exploitation of wind as an energy source to meet the world's electricity demand , 1998 .

[13]  Yoav Shoham.  Agent-Oriented Programming , 1993, Artif. Intell..

[14]  Jeffrey M. Bradshaw,et al.  Software agents , 1997 .

[15]  Lihui Wang,et al.  Reconfigurable manufacturing systems: the state of the art , 2008 .

[16]  Zhe Chen,et al.  Overview of different wind generator systems and their comparisons , 2008 .