Practical applications of multi-agent systems in electric power systems

The transformation of energy networks from passive to active systems requires the embedding of intelligence within the network. One suitable approach to integrating distributed intelligent systems is multi-agent systems technology, where components of functionality run as autonomous agents capable of interaction through messaging. This provides loose coupling between components that can benefit the complex systems envisioned for the smart grid. This paper reviews the key milestones of demonstrated agent systems in the power industry and considers which aspects of agent design must still be addressed for widespread application of agent technology to occur

Multi-agent systems for power engineering applications - part 2 : Technologies, standards and tools for building multi-agent systems

This is the second part of a 2-part paper that has arisen from the work of the IEEE Power Engineering Society's Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) Working Group. Part 1 of the paper examined the potential value of MAS technology to the power industry, described fundamental concepts and approaches within the field of multi-agent systems that are appropriate to power engineering applications, and presented a comprehensive review of the power engineering applications for which MAS are being investigated. It also defined the technical issues which must be addressed in order to accelerate and facilitate the uptake of the technology within the power and energy sector. Part 2 of the paper explores the decisions inherent in engineering multi-agent systems for applications in the power and energy sector and offers guidance and recommendations on how MAS can be designed and implemented. Given the significant and growing interest in this field, it is imperative that the power engineering community considers the standards, tools, supporting technologies and design methodologies available to those wishing to implement a MAS solution for a power engineering problem. The paper describes the various options available and makes recommendations on best practice. It also describes the problem of interoperability between different multi-agent systems and proposes how this may be tackled

Inter-organizational Interoperability through integration of Multiagent, Web Service, and Semantic Web Technologies

This paper presents a software architecture for inter-organizational multiagent systems. The architecture integrates Web service technology into multiagent systems to overcome the technical interoperability problem of current multiagent systems in the fast growing service-oriented environments. We integrate Semantic Web technology to make multiagent systems semantically interoperable. We address the problem of interoperability regarding interfaces, messaging protocols, data exchanged, and security whilst considering a dynamic e-business environment. The proposed architecture enables service virtualization, secure service access across organizational boundaries, service-to-agent communication, and OWL reasoning within agents

Service-oriented agents for collaborative industrial automation and production systems

Service-oriented Multi-Agent Systems (SoMAS) is an approach to combine the fundamental characteristics of service-oriented and multi-agent methods into a new platform for industrial automation. Several research works already targeted the connection of these technologies, presenting different perspectives in how and why to join them. This research focuses on available efforts and solutions in the area of SoMAS and explains the idea behind the service-oriented agents in industrial automation. A SoMAS system is mainly composed by shared resources in form of services and their providing/requesting agents. The paper also discusses the required engineering aspects of these systems, from the internal anatomy to the interaction patterns. Parameters of flexibility, reconfiguration, autonomy and reduced development efforts were considered and they should be the trademark of SoMAS. Aiming to illustrate the proposed approach, an example of service-oriented automation agents is given.The authors would like to thank the European Commission and the partners of the EU IST FP6 project “Service-Oriented Cross-layer infrastructure for Distributed smart Embedded devices” (SOCRADES), the EU FP6 "Network of Excellence for Innovative Production Machines and Systems” (I*PROMS), and the EC ICT FP7 project “Cooperating Objects Network of Excellence” (CONET) for their support

Ontology acquisition and exchange of evolutionary product-brokering agents

Agent-based electronic commerce (e-commerce) has been booming with the development of the Internet and agent technologies. However, little effort has been devoted to exploring the learning and evolving capabilities of software agents. This paper addresses issues of evolving software agents in e-commerce applications. An agent structure with evolution features is proposed with a focus on internal hierarchical knowledge. We argue that knowledge base of agents should be the cornerstone for their evolution capabilities, and agents can enhance their knowledge bases by exchanging knowledge with other agents. In this paper, product ontology is chosen as an instance of knowledge base. We propose a new approach to facilitate ontology exchange among e-commerce agents. The ontology exchange model and its formalities are elaborated. Product-brokering agents have been designed and implemented, which accomplish the ontology exchange process from request to integration

Federated Embedded Systems – a review of the literature in related fields

This report is concerned with the vision of smart interconnected objects, a vision that has attracted much attention lately. In this paper, embedded, interconnected, open, and heterogeneous control systems are in focus, formally referred to as Federated Embedded Systems. To place FES into a context, a review of some related research directions is presented. This review includes such concepts as systems of systems, cyber-physical systems, ubiquitous computing, internet of things, and multi-agent systems. Interestingly, the reviewed fields seem to overlap with each other in an increasing number of ways