Rockwell automation agents for manufacturing

ABSTRACT

The paper provides an overview of the agent-based solutions developed by the Rockwell Automation company for the purposes of industrial control. Using agent-based manufacturing control, a higher degree of flexibility and reconfigurability of manufacturing solutions as well as higher robustness of the industrial systems can be achieved. Specific solutions connected with the proposed agent architecture, with implementation of the real-time control agents as well as with the information transfer among the SW agents and the real-time agents in a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) are presented. Attention is also paid to the simulation of both the agent-based manufacturing facilities and their control systems. A simulation environment MAST for material handling systems has been implemented in JADE. The opportunity to re-use directly the simulation software on the agent control level is one of the most important features of MAST.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.1 Applications and Expert Systems
          Subjects: Industrial automation

Additional Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
        I.2.11 Distributed Artificial Intelligence
            Subjects: Intelligent agents
  I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING
      I.6.0 General

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
PLC, manufacturing, material-handling, multi-agent systems, real-time control, simulation