Formation of autonomous agent networks for manufacturing systems

Designing flexible manufacturing systems that can cope well with the dynamic environment has been an important goal. The objective of this paper is to describe a modelling approach developed to design a manufacturing system as a society of autonomous agents--called autonomous agent network (AAN). Within the AAN, autonomous agents are loosely coupled. System's tasks are accomplished by the autonomous agents collaboratively through the communication and information exchange definitions-protocols. The approach in this paper consists of autonomous agent formation and protocol formation. Reducing the degree of uncertainty, reducing the impact of uncertainty, and keeping the desired level of productivity are the main motivations for forming autonomous agents for manufacturing. By using two basic communication acts, 'request' and 'tell', five basic protocols are formed. The five basic protocols can further form specific task-application protocols to define the complex communication among autonomous agents. The methodology is demonstrated with an industrial case study. In addition, the validation of the performance in communication, autonomy and flexibility of AANs are also explained in this paper.