Architecture for Explicit Specification of Agent Behavior

Abstract

In the manufacturing domain high attention is paid to the flexibility, adaptability, and robustness of the production system. These features can be more easily achieved in a distributed system, such as holonic or multi-agent system. However, these features can be hardly maintained forever by hard coded system behavior – usually system update is needed from time to time to satisfy these requirements. We discuss the necessity of explicit definition of both declarative and procedural knowledge and propose explicit procedural knowledge handling. Sharing and distribution of such knowledge is discussed and is illustrated on an implemented transportation system example. Such a solution greatly increases the possibility of system integration, openness and flexibility, all without having to restart the running distributed system.