Multi-agent systems for discrete manufacturing processes control and knowledge management
Head of the group: Prof. Baltazár Frankovič, DrSc., dr.h.c.
Multi-agent systems (MAS) increases the effectiveness of the solution by application of evaluations, co-ordinations and negotiations rules. They promise to be very useful and progressive in prospect of the evaluation of new technical disciplines.
Advantages of using MAS may be formulated as follows:
Modularity: Each agent is an autonomous module and can work without interventions of the external world. Each agent can have different capabilities or functionalities and through cooperation the agents are able to achieve a variety of goals. From the practical point of view, producing a number of agents (e.g. software agents - programs) with different capabilities is more effective than creating one agent (e.g. a program), which is able to do everything. In addition, the MAS approach allows separating the original problem solving to a number of sub-problems of a manageable size.
Parallelism: The MAS approach supports parallel processing. A complicated problem could be solved in an acceptable time by using a number of agents, e.g., schedule for all jobs can be calculated independently and then a consensus about a final schedule is done via negotiation process.
Flexibility: MAS are able to react flexibly to each change occurred in the environment. Through cooperation the agents can assist each other to compensate the lack of capability or knowledge. They can share information or own capacity to resolve a newly appeared situation, if one agent is not able to resolve. Beside that, each intelligent agent can do reasoning about with whom and when to cooperate, in order to achieve effective performance.
The multi-agents systems can be used also for optimal scheduling . The aim is to create a multi-agent scheduling system and the system of rules for mutual coordination, negotiation and assessment of conflict situations in the process of the scheduling in production systems. The possible use of such a system is in energetic, in market driven production planning, in job-shop scheduling of a flexible production system for small and medium enterprises, in telecommunication systems, and there are many more applications.
Projects:
A national project supported by APVT agency. The goal is to develop a supporting system for production process designers and managers. On the basis of own production system specifications, the system allows to develop a production process model, as well as draft simulation and control.
The project integrates the knowledge and research results of four major research sites (UI SAS, KKUI TUKE, KAM STU, KASR STU), from the field of production process modeling and control in Slovakia. MARABU is an integrated means allowing to design a user-tailored model and relevant control with ready features used, and to simulate them for a given production process. A query sheet is used to input the user or expert requirements into the system. The library of ready solutions for various production plant types or for various production processes may be used in case of emergency situation, when there is lack of time to develop a complete control design. On the basis of user-expert's requirements the system allows to search the library for a ready, or similar, solution to be modified according to concrete user requirements. The library of existing solutions will be supplemented by new solutions; thus, the system becomes more comprehensive, and consequently the users can create their own solutions for future application.
Publications