NEW APPROACH TO KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION FOR ADVANCED MANUFACTURING MODES

Abstract

A new approach to knowledge representation for advanced manufacturing modes based on knowledge mesh (KM) and agent mesh (AM) is proposed to solve the self-reconfiguration problem of knowledgeable manufacturing systems. First, the definition of KMs is given and the relationships between KMs and AMs are presented. The multiple set and its mapping relationships onto the KM are then defined. The union, intersection and minus operations on the multiple sets of KMs are also defined and their related properties are presented. Physical meanings of properties of operations on the multiple sets are studied. Properties of operations on the multiple sets are compared with those of operations on the classical sets. Then the perfectness of a KM, the cut set between the two KMs, and the multiple cut set on the cut set are defined. On the basis of those above, the relational-database-based realization and the inference engine of KMs are studied. The self-reconfiguration methods based on both KMs and AMs are presented through two examples of self-reconfiguration of knowledgeable manufacturing systems, which verifies the validity of these methods.