Decentralized and on-the-fly agent-based service reconfiguration in manufacturing systems

Intelligent manufacturing systems rely on the capability to adapt and evolve to face the volatility of dynamic markets. The complexity of these systems increases with the demand of more customized and quality products, which requires more agile and flexible methods to support the dynamic and on-the-fly system reconfiguration aiming to respond quickly to product changes, by offering more efficient services. In this service-oriented manufacturing context, where process functionalities are modelled as services (e.g., quality control, welding and transportation), the dynamic reconfiguration of the services structure (e.g., in terms of quality, processing time and provided features) assumes a critical role to achieve the referred requirements. Despite the current research efforts, the service reconfiguration approaches usually use reactive event triggers, with decisions coming from a centralized decision-maker and performed manually. This means a lack of dynamic and run-time reconfiguration flexibility by discovering opportunities and needs to change, and, thus, exploring possible actions leading to new and appropriate system configurations. To overcome the mentioned issues, it is essential to provide solutions that answer to when and how to reconfigure a manufacturing system in an integrated, automatic and dynamic manner. For this purpose, this paper introduces an agent-based approach for service reconfiguration in manufacturing systems that allows the identification of opportunities in a pro-active and dynamic manner, and the on-the-fly implementation of new configuration solutions leading to a better production efficiency. The experimental results, using a flexible manufacturing system case study, allowed to verify the feasibility and benefits of the proposed agent-based service reconfiguration solution for competitive and collaborative industrial automation scenarios.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Consensus Tracking for Multiagent Systems Under Bounded Unknown External Disturbances Using Sliding-PID Control

This paper is devoted to the study of consensus tracking for multiagent systems under unknown but bounded external disturbances. A consensus tracking protocol which is a combination between the conventional PID controller and sliding mode controller named sliding-PID protocol is proposed. The protocol is applied to the consensus tracking of multiagent system under bounded external disturbances where results showed high effectiveness and robustness

A Generic Multi-Layer Architecture Based on ROS-JADE Integration for Autonomous Transport Vehicles

The design and operation of manufacturing systems is evolving to adapt to different challenges. One of the most important is the reconfiguration of the manufacturing process in response to context changes (e.g., faulty equipment or urgent orders, among others). In this sense, the Autonomous Transport Vehicle (ATV) plays a key role in building more flexible and decentralized manufacturing systems. Nowadays, robotic frameworks (RFs) are used for developing robotic systems such as ATVs, but they focus on the control of the robotic system itself. However, social abilities are required for performing intelligent interaction (peer-to-peer negotiation and decision-making) among the different and heterogeneous Cyber Physical Production Systems (such as machines, transport systems and other equipment present in the factory) to achieve manufacturing reconfiguration. This work contributes a generic multi-layer architecture that integrates a RF with a Multi-Agent System (MAS) to provide social abilities to ATVs. This architecture has been implemented on ROS and JADE, the most widespread RF and MAS framework, respectively. We believe this to be the first work that addresses the intelligent interaction of transportation systems for flexible manufacturing environments in a holistic form.This work was financed by MINECO/FEDER, UE (grant number DPI2015-68602-R) and by UPV/EHU (grant number PPG17/56)

Data acquisition system for fine surface process monitoring

Mestrado de dupla diplomação com a UTFPR - Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáThin surface manufacturing processes are known worldwide and used in a variety of applications. Among the various manufacturing processes, metal stamping and plastic injection are indispensable techniques for the success of companies in this field, where innovation is essential to remain competitive. In this sense, several thin surface optimization procedures are explored in the On-Surf project. This work focuses on a sensory data acquisition system on these surfaces, meeting the requirements of modularity and scalability, meaning that they can be easily expanded or contracted, depending on the number of sensors required. The designed system consists of several modules, one dedicated to signal conditioning to temperature and pressure sensors, the other has as purpose acquiring data and sending this data to a hub via Ethernet UDP communication, using the Olimex ESP32-PoE-ISO as an embedded system. Finally, Raspberry Pi was chosen as a data hub module to aggregate the information received by ESP32 modules. Forvalidation, several tests were performed to verify the structure robustness. As result, each conditioning module can support up to eight sensors simultaneously, the signal of the sensors was acquired by the embedded system at 1 kHz sampling rate, and UDP transmission reached a communication throughput of 2000 packets per second.Os processos de manufatura em superfícies finas são conhecidos mundialmente e utilizados em uma variedade de aplicações. Entre os vários processos de manufatura, a estampagem metálica e a injeção plástica são técnicas indispensáveis para o sucesso das empresas nesse campo, onde a inovação é essencial para se manter competitivo. Nesse sentido, vários procedimentos de otimização em superfícies finas são explorados no projeto On-Surf. Este trabalho enfoca um sistema de aquisição de dados sensoriais nessas superfícies, atendendo aos requisitos de modularidade e escalabilidade, conforme o número de sensores necessários. O sistema projetado consiste em vários módulos, um dedicado ao condicionamento de sinal; o outro tem como objetivo a aquisição de dados e enviá-los para um concentrador via comunicação Ethernet, usando o Olimex ESP32-PoE-ISO como sistema embarcado. Finalmente, o Raspberry Pi foi escolhido como um módulo de concentrador de dados para agregar as informações recebidas pelos módulos ESP32. Para validação, vários testes foram realizados para verificar a robustez da estrutura. Como resultado, cada módulo de condicionamento suporta oito sensores simultaneamente, o sinal dos sensores foi adquirido pelo sistema incorporado a uma taxa de amostragem de 1 kHz e a transmissão UDP alcançou uma taxa de transferência de dados de 2000 pacotes por segundo

Systematic Comparison of Software Agents and Digital Twins: Differences, Similarities, and Synergies in Industrial Production

To achieve a highly agile and flexible production, it is envisioned that industrial production systems gradually become more decentralized, interconnected, and intelligent. Within this vision, production assets collaborate with each other, exhibiting a high degree of autonomy. Furthermore, knowledge about individual production assets is readily available throughout their entire life-cycles. To realize this vision, adequate use of information technology is required. Two commonly applied software paradigms in this context are Software Agents (referred to as Agents) and Digital Twins (DTs). This work presents a systematic comparison of Agents and DTs in industrial applications. The goal of the study is to determine the differences, similarities, and potential synergies between the two paradigms. The comparison is based on the purposes for which Agents and DTs are applied, the properties and capabilities exhibited by these software paradigms, and how they can be allocated within the Reference Architecture Model Industry 4.0. The comparison reveals that Agents are commonly employed in the collaborative planning and execution of production processes, while DTs typically play a more passive role in monitoring production resources and processing information. Although these observations imply characteristic sets of capabilities and properties for both Agents and DTs, a clear and definitive distinction between the two paradigms cannot be made. Instead, the analysis indicates that production assets utilizing a combination of Agents and DTs would demonstrate high degrees of intelligence, autonomy, sociability, and fidelity. To achieve this, further standardization is required, particularly in the field of DTs.Comment: Manuscript submitted to Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Corresponding dataset: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8120623 Additional references in Sec. 1, some other minor change

Sistema de control reconfigurable y sostenible para aplicación en sistemas de manufactura flexibles

Dado el continuo y acelerado crecimiento de la economía global, la producción mundial se ha visto afectada por un incremento significativo de recursos y energía. Este incremento ha traído diversos avances tecnológicos y digitales en el sector industrial que han evolucionado el área de sistemas de control reconfigurables. Específicamente, esta nueva tecnología ha surgido para dar respuesta a la volatilidad de sistemas de manufactura y satisfacer niveles adecuados de efectividad y reactividad. Sin embargo, los sistemas enfrentan el reto de generar un balance entre sus indicadores. En las últimas décadas, se ha visto la necesidad de incluir la sostenibilidad como una nueva métrica de eficiencia para los sistemas de manufactura. Igualmente, existe la necesidad mundial de incorporar la sostenibilidad en las operaciones industriales y se evidencia una falta de estudios en la integración entre productividad y sostenibilidad. Por esta razón, este trabajo de investigación propone un sistema de control con una arquitectura que hace el balance de eficiencia y efectividad entre indicadores de productividad y sostenibilidad. Dicho sistema propuesto consta de una arquitectura compuesta por distintos tipos de entidades. Así mismo, la propuesta también incluye un mecanismo de reconfiguración compuesto por tres módulos. Para mostrar los beneficios del sistema propuesto, se presenta la validación mediante la realización de experimentos en un ambiente simulado haciendo uso del software basado en agentes denominado Netlogo. Se evalúa la aplicación en un sistema de manufactura real ubicado en Francia. Como resultados, se evidencia que sí es posible integrar eficiencia y efectividad en un sistema de control. Esto mejora el desempeño de la energía hasta en un 69% y el del tiempo en 30%.Given the continuous and accelerated growth of the global economy, world production has been affected by a significant increase in resources and energy. This increase has brought several technological and digital advances in the industrial sector that have evolved the area of reconfigurable control systems. Specifically, this new technology has emerged to respond to the volatility of manufacturing systems and meet adequate levels of accuracy and reactivity. However, these systems lack of generating a balance between their indicators. In recent decades, the need to include sustainability as a new efficiency metric for manufacturing systems has grown. Similarly, there is a worldwide need to incorporate sustainability in industrial operations and there is a lack of studies on the integration between productivity and sustainability. For this reason, this work proposes a control system with an architecture that balances efficiency and effectiveness between productivity and sustainability indicators. This proposed system consists of an architecture composed of different types of entities. Likewise, the proposal also includes a reconfiguration mechanism composed of three modules. To show the benefits of the proposed system, validation is presented by conducting experiments in a simulated environment using an agent-based software known as Netlogo. The application is evaluated in a real manufacturing system located in France As a result, it is evident that it is possible to integrate efficiency and effectiveness into a control. This improves energy efficiency by up to 69% and processing time by 30%.Magíster en Ingeniería IndustrialMaestrí