2 research outputs found
Deployment of an Distributed Strategic Material Flow Control for Automated Material Flow Systems Consisting of Autonomous Modules
The modularisation of hardware and software is one approach to handle the demand for increasing flexibility and changeability of automated material flow systems that are, for example, utilised in flexible production systems. In such automated material flow systems, autonomous modules communicate with each other to coordinate and execute transport tasks. In this paper a strategic material flow control is introduced, which is distributed on several modules realised with a multi-agent system. The strategic material flow control agent coordinates transport tasks with advanced logistical requirements, such as sequencing. A transport task states for a transport unit the system source and sink together with arrival criteria at the sink, e.g. sequence In order to fulfil the arrival criteria the strategic material flow agent selects additional destinations within the automated material flow system to buffer a transport unit. For the selection of suitable buffer modules, several strategies are proposed and evaluated in a simulation study
Design, Application and Evaluation of a Multi Agent System in the Logistics Domain
The increasing demand for flexibility of automated production systems also
affects the automated material flow systems (aMFS) they contain and demands
reconfigurable systems. However, the centralized control concept usually
applied in aMFS hinders an easy adaptation, as the entire control software has
to be re-tested, when manually changing sub-parts of the control. As adaption
and subsequent testing are a time-consuming task, concepts for splitting the
control from one centralized to multiple, decentralized control nodes are
required. Therefore, this paper presents a holistic agent-based control concept
for aMFS, whereby the system is divided into so-called automated material flow
modules (aMFM), each being controlled by a dedicated module agent. The concept
allows the reconfiguration of aMFS, consisting of heterogeneous, stationary
aMFM, during runtime. Furthermore, it includes aspects such as uniform agent
knowledge bases through metamodel-based development, a communication ontology
considering different information types and properties, strategic route
optimization in decentralized control architecture and a visualization concept
to make decisions of the module agents comprehensible to operators and
maintenance staff. The evaluation of the concept is performed by means of
material flow simulations as well as a prototypical implementation on a
lab-sized demonstrator.Comment: 13 pages, https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9042827