Decentralized control of automatic guided vehicles: applying multi-agent systems in practice

ABSTRACT

An automatic guided vehicle (AGV) transportation system is a fully automated system that provides logistic services in an industrial environment such as a warehouse or a factory. Traditionally, the AGVs that execute the transportation tasks are controlled by a central server via wireless communication. In a joint effort between Egemin, an industrial manufacturer of AGV transportation systems, and DistriNet Labs research at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, we developed an innovative decentralized architecture for controlling AGVs. The driving motivations behind decentralizing the control of AGVs were new and future quality requirements such as flexibility and openness. At the software architectural level, the AGV control system is structured as a multi-agent system; the detailed design and implementation is object-oriented. In this paper, we report our experiences with developing the agent-based control system for AGVs. Starting from system requirements, we give an overview of the software architecture and we zoom in on a number of concrete functionalities. We reflect on our experiences and report lessons learned from applying multi-agent systems for real-world AGV control.

References

1. M. Barbacci, R. Ellison, A. Lattanze, J. Stafford, C. Weinstock, and W. Wood. Quality Attribute Workshops. Technical Report CMU/SEI-2003-TR-016, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, USA, 2003.
2. L. Bass, P. Clements, and R. Kazman. Software Architecture in Practice. Addison Wesley Publishing Comp., 2003.
3. A. Nelis Boucké, Danny Weyns, Kurt Schelfthout, and Tom Holvoet. Applying the ATAM to an architecture for decentralized control of a transportation system. In phSecond International Conference on Quality of Software Architectures, volume 4214 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 2006.
4. F. Buchmann and L. Bass. Introduction to the Attribute Driven Design Method. In 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering, Toronto, Canada, 2001. IEEE Computer Society.
5. S. Bussmann, N. Jennings, and M. Wooldridge. Multiagent Systems for Manufactoring Control: A Design Methodology. Springer Series on Agent Technology, 2004.
6. P. Clements, R. Kazman, and M. Klein. Evaluating Software Architectures: Methods and Case Studies. Addison Wesley Publishing Comp., 2002.
7. E. Durfee and V. Lesser. Negotiating Task Decomposition and Allocation Using Partial Global Planning. Distributed Artificial Intelligence, 2: 229--244, 1989.
8. B. Henderson--Sellers and P. Giorgini. Agent-oriented Methodologies. Idea Group Inc., 2005.
9. J. Kramer and J. Magee. Self-managed systems: an architectural challenge. In FOSE '07: 2007 Future of Software Engineering, Washington, DC, USA, 2007. IEEE Computer Society.
10. D. Parnas. Designing Software for Ease of Extension and Contraction. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 5 (2): 128--137, 1979.
11. J. Richter. Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming. Microsoft Press, Redmond, USA, 2002.
12. K. Schelfthout. Supporting Coordination in Mobile Networks: A Middleware Approach. Ph.D, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2006.
13. K. Schelfthout, D. Weyns, and T. Holvoet. Middleware that Enables Protocol-Based Coordination Applied in Automatic Guided Vehicle Control. IEEE Distributed Systems Online, 7 (8), 2006.
14. R. Smith. The Contract Net Protocol: High Level Communication and Control in a Distributed Problem Solver. In IEEE Transactions on Computers, C-29(12), 1980.
15. E. Steegmans, D. Weyns, T. Holvoet, and Y. Berbers. A Design Process for Adaptive Behavior of Situated Agents. In Agent-Oriented Software Engineering V, volume 3382 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer, 2005.
16. K. Sycara. Multiagent Systems. Artificial Intelligence, 10 (2): 79--93, 1998.
17. T. Tyrrell. Computational Mechanisms for Action Selection. PhD Dissertation, University of Edinburgh, 1993.
18. D. Weyns. An Architecture-Centric Approach for Software Engineering with Situated Multiagent Systems. Ph.D, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 2006.
19. D. Weyns and T. Holvoet. Architectural design of a situated multiagent system for controlling automatic guided vehicles. International Journal on Agent Oriented Software Engineering, 2 (1): 90--128, 2008.
20. D. Weyns, K. Schelfthout, T. Holvoet, and T. Lefever. Decentralized control of E'GV transportation systems. In ph4th Joint Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, Industry Track, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2005. ACM Press, New York, NY, USA.
21. D. Weyns, N. Boucke, and T. Holvoet. A field-based versus a protocol-based approach for adaptive task assignment. Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 2008. in press.
22. M. Wooldridge, N. Jennings, and D. Kinny. The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 3 (3): 285--312, 2000.

Index Terms

• Computing methodologies

  • Artificial intelligence

    • Distributed artificial intelligence

      • Multi-agent systems

• Software and its engineering

  • Software notations and tools

    • General programming languages

      • Language features

        • Patterns

  • Software organization and properties

    • Software system structures

      • Distributed systems organizing principles

        • Client-server architectures

      • Software architectures