An agile and adaptive holonic architecture for manufacturing control

Tese de doutoramento. Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. 2004. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Port

A model-based approach for supporting flexible automation production systems and an agent-based implementaction

158 p.En esta Tesis Doctoral se plantea una arquitectura de gestión genérica y personalizable, capaz de asegurar el cumplimiento de los requisitos de calidad de servicio (QoS) de un sistema de control industrial. Esta arquitectura permite la modificación de los mecanismos de detección y recuperación de los requisitos de QoS en función de diversos tipos de ésta. Como prueba de concepto, la arquitectura de gestión ha sido implementada mediante un middleware basado en sistemas multi-agente. Este middleware proporciona una serie de agentes distribuidos, los cuales se encargan de la monitorización y recuperación de las QoS en caso de su perdida.La incorporación de los mecanismos de reconfiguración incrementa la complejidad de los sistemas de control. Con el fin de facilitar el diseño de estos sistemas, se ha presentado un framework basado en modelos que guía y facilita el diseño de los sistemas de control reconfigurables. Este framework proporciona una serie de herramientas basadas en modelos que permiten la generación automática del código de control del sistema, así como de los mecanismos de monitorización y reconfiguración de los agentes del middleware.La implementación de la arquitectura ha sido validada mediante una serie de escenarios basados en una célula de montaje real

Controlling hazards and safety in complex systems: a multi-layered part-whole approach to system safety

The behavior of complex dependable systems poses severe safety issues due to hazards which may result from incorrect and unpredictable behavior. In order to prevent such hazards, system behavior has to be specified and checked incrementally, in order to defeat the overall system\u2019s complexity. Modularity in system design is however not trivial due to the intrinsic monolithic nature of the control loop, typical of such systems. An additional problem is given by the fact that the current modeling paradigm tends at introducing additional interactive complexity due to the direct communication and synchronization mechanism among decomposed modules. It can be shown, however, that modular decomposition is feasible by revising the current communication and interaction paradigm. Physical interactions in physical systems denote in fact less evident conceptual structures, which host the overall interaction and synchronization knowledge among the component parts. By introducing additional system entities with the aim of hosting such knowledge in a localized and compact manner, we obtain a part-whole hierarchy of systems, called holarchy. Such systems are, at the same time, both parts and wholes within a holarchy, thus giving a formal characterization to Koestler\u2019s holons

Advances in Robotics, Automation and Control

The book presents an excellent overview of the recent developments in the different areas of Robotics, Automation and Control. Through its 24 chapters, this book presents topics related to control and robot design; it also introduces new mathematical tools and techniques devoted to improve the system modeling and control. An important point is the use of rational agents and heuristic techniques to cope with the computational complexity required for controlling complex systems. Through this book, we also find navigation and vision algorithms, automatic handwritten comprehension and speech recognition systems that will be included in the next generation of productive systems developed by man

Process control and configuration of a reconfigurable production system using a multi-agent software system

Thesis (M. Tech. (Information Technology)) -- Central University of technology, Free State, 2011Traditional designs for component-handling platforms are rigidly linked to the product being produced. Control and monitoring methods for these platforms consist of various proprietary hardware controllers containing the control logic for the production process. Should the configuration of the component handling platform change, the controllers need to be taken offline and reprogrammed to take the changes into account. The current thinking in component-handling system design is the notion of re-configurability. Reconfigurability means that with minimum or no downtime the system can be adapted to produce another product type or overcome a device failure. The re-configurable component handling platform is built-up from groups of independent devices. These groups or cells are each responsible for some aspect of the overall production process. By moving or swopping different versions of these cells within the component-handling platform, re-configurability is achieved. Such a dynamic system requires a flexible communications platform and high-level software control architecture to accommodate the reconfigurable nature of the system. This work represents the design and testing of the core of a re-configurable production control software platform. Multiple software components work together to control and monitor a re-configurable component handling platform. The design and implementation of a production database, production ontology, communications architecture and the core multi-agent control application linking all these components together is presented

A model-based approach for supporting flexible automation production systems and an agent-based implementaction

158 p.En esta Tesis Doctoral se plantea una arquitectura de gestión genérica y personalizable, capaz de asegurar el cumplimiento de los requisitos de calidad de servicio (QoS) de un sistema de control industrial. Esta arquitectura permite la modificación de los mecanismos de detección y recuperación de los requisitos de QoS en función de diversos tipos de ésta. Como prueba de concepto, la arquitectura de gestión ha sido implementada mediante un middleware basado en sistemas multi-agente. Este middleware proporciona una serie de agentes distribuidos, los cuales se encargan de la monitorización y recuperación de las QoS en caso de su perdida.La incorporación de los mecanismos de reconfiguración incrementa la complejidad de los sistemas de control. Con el fin de facilitar el diseño de estos sistemas, se ha presentado un framework basado en modelos que guía y facilita el diseño de los sistemas de control reconfigurables. Este framework proporciona una serie de herramientas basadas en modelos que permiten la generación automática del código de control del sistema, así como de los mecanismos de monitorización y reconfiguración de los agentes del middleware.La implementación de la arquitectura ha sido validada mediante una serie de escenarios basados en una célula de montaje real

Coalition based approach for shop floor agility – a multiagent approach

Dissertation submitted for a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, speciality of Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaThis thesis addresses the problem of shop floor agility. In order to cope with the disturbances and uncertainties that characterise the current business scenarios faced by manufacturing companies, the capability of their shop floors needs to be improved quickly, such that these shop floors may be adapted, changed or become easily modifiable (shop floor reengineering). One of the critical elements in any shop floor reengineering process is the way the control/supervision architecture is changed or modified to accommodate for the new processes and equipment. This thesis, therefore, proposes an architecture to support the fast adaptation or changes in the control/supervision architecture. This architecture postulates that manufacturing systems are no more than compositions of modularised manufacturing components whose interactions when aggregated are governed by contractual mechanisms that favour configuration over reprogramming. A multiagent based reference architecture called Coalition Based Approach for Shop floor Agility – CoBASA, was created to support fast adaptation and changes of shop floor control architectures with minimal effort. The coalitions are composed of agentified manufacturing components (modules), whose relationships within the coalitions are governed by contracts that are configured whenever a coalition is established. Creating and changing a coalition do not involve programming effort because it only requires changes to the contract that regulates it

Web service control of component-based agile manufacturing systems

Current global business competition has resulted in significant challenges for manufacturing and production sectors focused on shorter product lifecyc1es, more diverse and customized products as well as cost pressures from competitors and customers. To remain competitive, manufacturers, particularly in automotive industry, require the next generation of manufacturing paradigms supporting flexible and reconfigurable production systems that allow quick system changeovers for various types of products. In addition, closer integration of shop floor and business systems is required as indicated by the research efforts in investigating "Agile and Collaborative Manufacturing Systems" in supporting the production unit throughout the manufacturing lifecycles. The integration of a business enterprise with its shop-floor and lifecycle supply partners is currently only achieved through complex proprietary solutions due to differences in technology, particularly between automation and business systems. The situation is further complicated by the diverse types of automation control devices employed. Recently, the emerging technology of Service Oriented Architecture's (SOA's) and Web Services (WS) has been demonstrated and proved successful in linking business applications. The adoption of this Web Services approach at the automation level, that would enable a seamless integration of business enterprise and a shop-floor system, is an active research topic within the automotive domain. If successful, reconfigurable automation systems formed by a network of collaborative autonomous and open control platform in distributed, loosely coupled manufacturing environment can be realized through a unifying platform of WS interfaces for devices communication. The adoption of SOA- Web Services on embedded automation devices can be achieved employing Device Profile for Web Services (DPWS) protocols which encapsulate device control functionality as provided services (e.g. device I/O operation, device state notification, device discovery) and business application interfaces into physical control components of machining automation. This novel approach supports the possibility of integrating pervasive enterprise applications through unifying Web Services interfaces and neutral Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) message communication between control systems and business applications over standard Ethernet-Local Area Networks (LAN's). In addition, the re-configurability of the automation system is enhanced via the utilisation of Web Services throughout an automated control, build, installation, test, maintenance and reuse system lifecycle via device self-discovery provided by the DPWS protocol...cont'd

A process-based control for evolvable production systems

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresNowadays, companies in a challenging environment are compelled to adapt to the rapid changes in the manufacturing business. The search for new processes to create products with short life-cycles at low cost, while keeping the same levels of productivity and quality is greater than ever. This has generated the need to create even more agile manufacturing systems, which could easily adapt to the market changes at a low cost. Advances in information technologies have allowed manufacturing systems to achieve new levels of agility, opening the doors to new approaches. These same advances helped companies in several sectors other than manufacturing to gain e ectiveness through the synchronization of the processes of their several departments by using Business Process Management tools. This thesis proposes a system that reacts and adapts itself to di erent production orders by means of recon guration. To reach this goal, the concept of Business Process Management was used. This concept, already used in many companies, allows them to model their inner behaviours with processes that can be changed according to their needs. A manufacturing system using this may become equally agile and alter its functioning in accordance with the needs of other departments of the same company. To create the system presented in this thesis it was used a multi-agent architecture based on process execution. Each agent contains a knowledge base, used by its processes,that stores internal or external information. This system may be used not only in the manufacturing shop oor, but also in any other areas within a company. This thesis also presents an application of the system to the shop oor, based on the Evolvable Production Systems concept, in which each agent represents a manufacturing resource that o ers a given set of services useful to the production process. The resources,by means of the agents, may aggregate among themselves to execute services together. Keywords: Manufacturing system, multi-agent system, ontology, process, BPM, EPS

Organization based multiagent architecture for distributed environments

[EN]Distributed environments represent a complex field in which applied solutions should be flexible and include significant adaptation capabilities. These environments are related to problems where multiple users and devices may interact, and where simple and local solutions could possibly generate good results, but may not be effective with regards to use and interaction. There are many techniques that can be employed to face this kind of problems, from CORBA to multi-agent systems, passing by web-services and SOA, among others. All those methodologies have their advantages and disadvantages that are properly analyzed in this documents, to finally explain the new architecture presented as a solution for distributed environment problems. The new architecture for solving complex solutions in distributed environments presented here is called OBaMADE: Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments. It is a multiagent architecture based on the organizations of agents paradigm, where the agents in the architecture are structured into organizations to improve their organizational capabilities. The reasoning power of the architecture is based on the Case-Based Reasoning methology, being implemented in a internal organization that uses agents to create services to solve the external request made by the users. The OBaMADE architecture has been successfully applied to two different case studies where its prediction capabilities have been properly checked. Those case studies have showed optimistic results and, being complex systems, have demonstrated the abstraction and generalizations capabilities of the architecture. Nevertheless OBaMADE is intended to be able to solve much other kind of problems in distributed environments scenarios. It should be applied to other varieties of situations and to other knowledge fields to fully develop its potencial.[ES]Los entornos distribuidos representan un campo de conocimiento complejo en el que las soluciones a aplicar deben ser flexibles y deben contar con gran capacidad de adaptación. Este tipo de entornos está normalmente relacionado con problemas donde varios usuarios y dispositivos entran en juego. Para solucionar dichos problemas, pueden utilizarse sistemas locales que, aunque ofrezcan buenos resultados en términos de calidad de los mismos, no son tan efectivos en cuanto a la interacción y posibilidades de uso. Existen múltiples técnicas que pueden ser empleadas para resolver este tipo de problemas, desde CORBA a sistemas multiagente, pasando por servicios web y SOA, entre otros. Todas estas mitologías tienen sus ventajas e inconvenientes, que se analizan en este documento, para explicar, finalmente, la nueva arquitectura presentada como una solución para los problemas generados en entornos distribuidos. La nueva arquitectura aquí se llama OBaMADE, que es el acrónimo del inglés Organization Based Multiagent Architecture for Distributed Environments (Arquitectura Multiagente Basada en Organizaciones para Entornos Distribuidos). Se trata de una arquitectura multiagente basasa en el paradigma de las organizaciones de agente, donde los agentes que forman parte de la arquitectura se estructuran en organizaciones para mejorar sus capacidades organizativas. La capacidad de razonamiento de la arquitectura está basada en la metodología de razonamiento basado en casos, que se ha implementado en una de las organizaciones internas de la arquitectura por medio de agentes que crean servicios que responden a las solicitudes externas de los usuarios. La arquitectura OBaMADE se ha aplicado de forma exitosa a dos casos de estudio diferentes, en los que se han demostrado sus capacidades predictivas. Aplicando OBaMADE a estos casos de estudio se han obtenido resultados esperanzadores y, al ser sistemas complejos, se han demostrado las capacidades tanto de abstracción como de generalización de la arquitectura presentada. Sin embargo, esta arquitectura está diseñada para poder ser aplicada a más tipo de problemas de entornos distribuidos. Debe ser aplicada a más variadas situaciones y a otros campos de conocimiento para desarrollar completamente el potencial de esta arquitectura