Abstract
The description of structure and complex interactions in Multi-agent-based Industrial Cyber-physical (MAS-ICPS) systems has been elusively addressed in the literature. Existing works, grounded on model-based engineering, have been successful at characterizing and solving system integration problems. However, they fail to describe accurately the collective and dynamic execution behaviour of large and complex industrial systems, particularly in more discrete production domains, such as: automotive, home appliances, aerospace, food and beverages, etc. In these domains, the execution flow diverts dynamically due to production disturbances, custom orders, fluctuations in demand in mixed model production, faults, quality-control and product rework, etc. These dynamic conditions require re-allocation and reconfiguration of production resources, redirection of production flows, re-scheduling of orders, etc. A meta-model for describing the structure and complex interactions in MAS-ICPS is defined in this paper. This contribution goes beyond the State-Of-The-Art (SOTA) as the proposed meta-model describes structure, as many other literature contributions, but also describes the execution behaviour of arbitrarily complex interactions. The previous is achieved with the introduction of general execution flow control operators in the meta-model. These operators cover, among other aspects, delegation of the execution flow and dynamic decision making. Additionally, the contribution also goes beyond the SOTA by including validation mechanisms for the models generated by the meta-model. Finally, the contribution adds to the current literature by providing a meta-model focusing on production execution and not just on describing the structural connectivity aspects of ICPSs.
Highlights
Multiagent systems have historically been proposed, across a wide range of industrial application domains, as a solution for the creation, management and development of intelligent industrial systems [1]–[6]
The following details are organized as follows: Section II discusses related work and positions the current contribution in that context; Section III is the main contribution and describes the Light Mechatronic Agent Design Meta-Model (LMADE), discusses its requirements and rationale and describes the main components of the meta-model in UML; Section IV discusses a didactic modelling example; Section V discusses the methodology for validating the generated model as instance of the proposed meta-model: Section VI positions and discusses the main results and, Section VII reflects on the main conclusions
Before describing the technical details, it is worth mentioning that Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs) is a large and roughly defined domain
Summary
Multiagent systems have historically been proposed, across a wide range of industrial application domains, as a solution for the creation, management and development of intelligent industrial systems [1]–[6]. The analysed practices do not provide, in a platform independent way, a generic model that relates the capabilities exposed by agents and their complex interactions, that often include several agents, to their low level execution This is one of the main challenges that this work seeks to address which is of significant importance for all the other works described in the literature that seek to address dynamic system reconfiguration in the scope of sustainable production, as discussed before. While addressing the problem of describing complex interactions and articulating this agent-based execution consistently with field level execution, the proposed approach creates the opportunity to describe the functions of a cyberphysical resource at an abstraction and with a granularity level useful for these other dynamic reconfiguration and optimization approaches In this context, this paper focuses on providing a meta-model, in a platform and technology agnostic way, that addresses the identified challenges. The following details are organized as follows: Section II discusses related work and positions the current contribution in that context; Section III is the main contribution and describes the Light Mechatronic Agent Design Meta-Model (LMADE), discusses its requirements and rationale and describes the main components of the meta-model in UML; Section IV discusses a didactic modelling example; Section V discusses the methodology for validating the generated model as instance of the proposed meta-model: Section VI positions and discusses the main results and, Section VII reflects on the main conclusions
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