Agent-based intelligent system development for decision support in chemical process industry

This paper presents an agent-based intelligent system to support coordinate manufacturing execution and decision-making in chemical process industry. A multi-agent system (MAS) framework is developed to provide a flexible infrastructure for the integration of chemical process information and process models. The system comprise of a process knowledge base and a group of functional agents. Agents in the system can communicate and cooperate with each other to exchange and share information, and to achieve timely decisions in dealing with various scenarios in process operations and manufacturing management. Process simulation, artificial intelligent technique, rule-based decision supports are integrated in this system for process analysis, process monitoring, process performance prediction and operation suggestion. The implementation of this agent-based system was illustrated with two case studies, including one application in process monitoring and process performance prediction for a chemical process and one application in de-bottlenecking of a site utility system.     

ADK: An Agent Development Kit Based on a Formal Design Model for Multi-Agent Systems

The advent of multi-agent systems has brought us opportunities for the development of complex software that will serve as the infrastructure for advanced distributed applications. During the past decade, there have been many agent architectures proposed for implementing agent-based systems, and also a few efforts to formally specify agent behaviors. However, research on narrowing the gap between agent formal models and agent implementation is rare. In this paper, we propose a model-based approach to designing and implementing intelligent agents for multi-agent systems (MAS). Instead of using formal methods for the purpose of specifying agent behavior, we bring formal methods into the design phase of the agent development life cycle. Specifically, we use the formalism called agent-oriented G-net model, which is based on the G-net formalism (a type of high-level Petri net), to serve as the high-level design for intelligent agents. Based on the high-level design, we further derived the agent architecture and the detailed design for agent implementation. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, we developed the toolkit called ADK (Agent Development Kit) that supports rapid development of intelligent agents for multi-agent systems and we discuss the role of inheritance in agent-oriented development. As a potential solution for automated software development, we summarize the procedure to generate a model-based design of application-specific agents. Finally, to illustrate an application built on ADK, we present an air-ticket trading example.     

An autonomous agent development environment for engineering applications

Agent technology is playing an increasingly important role in developing distributed, intelligent, and collaborative engineering applications. The innate difficulties of interoperation between heterogeneous agent communities and rapid development of multi-agent systems have motivated the emergence of FIPA specifications and the proliferation of multi-agent system platforms or toolkits that implement FIPA specifications. This paper presents a FIPA compliant multi-agent framework called Autonomous Agent Development Environment (AADE). Originating from the engineering fields, AADE can facilitate the rapid development of collaborative engineering applications (especially in engineering design and manufacturing fields) through the provision of reusable packages of agent level components and programming tools. An agent oriented engineering project on the development of a collaborative product design environment is implemented based on the facilities provided by AADE.     

An agent-based workflow system for enterprise based on FIPA-OS framework

The paper describes what we have learned from implementing a multi-agent architecture used to support enterprise notions and principles for intelligent systems design. In the last couple of years, agent-based management systems have been widely used to monitor and control business design processes. In this paper, multi-agent architecture is proposed and applied to the workflow management system in ASE¹ (Advance Semiconductor Electronic) Inc., which is the world’s well-known largest provider of independent semiconductor for manufacturing services in assembly and test. The proposed FIPA-OS autonomous workflow management system uses a workflow co-ordination mechanism and an agent integration mechanism to enable the routine daily jobs error handle. Our vision for extending the FIPA-OS architectural elements to cover the development and implementation of generic web-Centric collaborative applications concludes the paper.     

Agent-based modelling and simulation for the analysis of social patterns

Agent-based modelling facilitates the implementation of tools for the analysis of social patterns. This comes from the fact that agent related concepts allow the representation of organizational and behavioural aspects of individuals in a society and their interactions. An agent can characterize an individual with capabilities to perceive and react to events in the environment, taking into account its mental state (beliefs, goals), and to interact with other agents in its social environment. There are already tools to perform agent-based social simulation but these are usually hard to use by social scientists, as they require a good expertise in computer programming. In order to cope with such difficulty, we propose the use of agent-based graphical modelling languages, which can help to specify social systems as multi-agent systems in a more convenient way. This is complemented with transformation tools to be able to analyse and derive emergent social behavioural patterns by using the capabilities of existing simulation platforms. In this way, this framework can facilitate the specification and analysis of complex behavioural patterns that may emerge in social systems.     

An agent-oriented approach to resolve scheduling optimization in intelligent manufacturing

Agent technology is considered as a promising approach for developing optimizing process plans in intelligent manufacturing. As a bridge between computer aided design (CAD) and computer aided manufacturing (CAM), the computer aided scheduling optimization (CASO) plays an important role in the computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) environment. In order to develop a multi-agent-based scheduling system for intelligent manufacturing, it is necessary to build various functional agents for all the resources and an agent manager to improve the scheduling agility. Identifying the shortcomings of traditional scheduling algorithm in intelligent manufacturing, the architecture of intelligent manufacturing system based on multi-agent is put forward, among which agent represents the basic processing entity. Multi-agent-based scheduling is a new intelligent scheduling method based on the theories of multi-agent system (MAS) and distributed artificial intelligence (DAI). It views intelligent manufacturing as composed of a set of intelligent agents, who are responsible for one or more activities and interacting with other related agents in planning and executing their responsibilities. In this paper, the proposed architecture consists of various autonomous agents that are capable of communicating with each other and making decisions based on their knowledge. The architecture of intelligent manufacturing, the scheduling optimization algorithm, the negotiation processes and protocols among the agents are described in detail. A prototype system is built and validated in an illustrative example, which demonstrates the feasibility of the proposed approach. The experiments prove that the implementation of multi-agent technology in intelligent manufacturing system makes the operations much more flexible, economical and energy efficient.     

Development of an agent-based system for manufacturing control and coordination with ontology and RFID technology

Integrating physical objects with the corresponding enterprise applications any time any where is the essential issue for a real-time enterprise. This study proposes a multi-agent system framework called agent-based manufacturing control and coordination (AMCC) system, a agent-based framework using ontology and RFID technology to monitor and control dynamic production flows and also to improve the traceability and visibility of mass customization manufacturing processes. The capabilities offered by multi-agent systems to respond to RFID events in real-time and a broad class of agent design and coordination issue regarding just in time (JIT) and just in sequence (JIS) manufacturing processes are also exploited in this study. To validate the proposed framework, case study of a bicycle manufacturing company is used to demonstrate how the proposed framework can benefit its JIT production. Finally, an example prototype system is implemented to demonstrate the concept of the proposed framework.     

Software agents for knowledge management: coordination in multi-agent supply chains and auctions

A fundamental question that must be addressed in software agents for knowledge management is coordination in multi-agent systems. The coordination problem is ubiquitous in knowledge management, such as in manufacturing, supply chains, negotiation, and agent-mediated auctions. This paper summarizes several multi-agent systems for knowledge management that have been developed recently by the author and his collaborators to highlight new research directions for multi-agent knowledge management systems. In particular, the paper focuses on three areas of research:

• •Coordination mechanisms in agent-based supply chains. How do we design mechanisms for coordination, information and knowledge sharing in supply chains with self-interested agents? What would be a good coordination mechanism when we have a non-linear structure of the supply chain, such as a pyramid structure? What are the desirable properties for the optimal structure of efficient supply chains in terms of information and knowledge sharing? Will DNA computing be a viable tool for the analysis of agent-based supply chains?
• •Coordination mechanisms in agent-mediated auctions. How do we induce cooperation and coordination among various self-interested agents in agent-mediated auctions? What are the fundamental principles to promote agent cooperation behavior? How do we train agents to learn to cooperate rather than program agents to cooperate? What are the principles of trust building in agent systems?
• •Multi-agent enterprise knowledge management, performance impact and human aspects. Will people use agent-based systems? If so, how do we coordinate agent-based systems with human beings? What would be the impact of agent systems in knowledge management in an information economy?

     

Communication infrastructure in distributed scheduling

The emergence of distributed artificial intelligent (DAI) introduced a new approach to solve scheduling problems by a set of scheduling systems that interact with each other in the problem-solving process. In this paper, we describe a communication infrastructure to handle connection and communication between distributed Internet scheduling systems for distributed applications. First, we present an agent model of distributed scheduling systems where agents can communicate and coordinate activities with each other via an agent communication language. Then, we define the syntax and semantics for the agent communication languages, and negotiation mechanism. Following that, we discuss the design and development of the prototype for the multi-agent scheduling systems. We conclude with a discussion of communication issues for heterogeneous agent-based scheduling systems to solve distributed scheduling problems.     

一种等级式的多主体仿真框架

基于多主体的建模和仿真已经被广泛地应用到了复杂系统所涉及到的各个领域,系统中智能主体的实现直接影响系统的性能和仿真结果的有效性。本文通过分析反应主体和慎思主体,指出其各自的优点和缺陷,结合复杂系统仿真的实际情况,提出融合两种主体的多主体系统框架,并对实现中的关键问题给出了详细说明。     

Agent-Based Systems for Intelligent Manufacturing: A State-of-the-Art Survey

Agent technology has been considered as an important approach for developing distributed intelligent manufacturing systems. A number of researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, supply chain management, manufacturing planning, scheduling and control, materials handling, and holonic manufacturing systems. This paper gives a brief survey of some related projects in this area, and discusses some key issues in developing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent technology for enterprise integration and supply chain management, agent encapsulation, system architectures, dynamic system reconfiguration, learning, design and manufacturability assessments, distributed dynamic scheduling, integration of planning and scheduling, concurrent scheduling and execution, factory control structures, potential tools and standards for developing agent-based manufacturing systems. An extensive annotated bibliography is provided.     

A novel agent-based concept of household appliances

Mass production, such as white goods manufacturing, is traditionally bound to hierarchical factory-floor procedures and accepts only gradual changes in technology and product architecture. This paper introduces an idea on how to upgrade from classical to network-connected reconfigurable devices. A generic multi-agent architecture was created, derived from belief-desire-and-intention (BDI) agents. It covers all types of white goods in the form of rational home assistant, and enables reconfiguration of agent-based household appliances during the design, production and implementation phases. The introduced concept involves a multi-agent architecture which utilizes distributed processing power at different levels: higher-level agents run on more powerful devices than embedded appliance’s controllers, personal assistant (PDAs), or Windows or Linux based personal computers (PCs). PDAs can run a single agent, for example a GUI agent, whereas the embedded controllers execute lower-level device (embedded) agents. In this way, all the appliance’s basic functionality, such as its hardware units (e.g., electrical motors, valves, heaters, etc.), are initially simulated by auxiliary agents running together with higher-level agents on a PC or PDA. Using this simulator in the design phase, all vital functions and capabilities of the agent-based appliance under development are thoroughly tested first. Afterwards, the agents that simulate the device’s hardware units and environment are simply replaced by the communication to the corresponding device units. In such way, any new functionality or device’s behaviour can be upgraded any time just by adapting the core of the multi-agent architecture on the PC and individual agents on the PDA or the embedded agents in appliances. A thorough design and implementation cycle of the proposed solution using two freeware development tools is also described, i.e., the Prometheus agent design methodology and the agent simulation/execution environment called Jadex. The approach is exemplified by building a simulator of an agent-based household appliance, namely a Multi-agent Washing Assistant as a special instance of rational home assistant.     

Time-out protocol for task allocation in multi-agent systems

In multi-agent system, the implementation of a time-out protocol can improve workflow coherence and reduce the communication congestion due to the coordination process among agents. This approach is part of effective CIM workflow planning and control for agent-based operations emerging in assembly, manufacturing, service, and logistics. The case study illustrated in this article concerns industrial testing and rework services provided by a shared resource. Results of analyses have been verified by simulation to illustrate how performance improves or deteriorates when different time-out protocols are applied. A general model is introduced for numerical evaluation, identifying the recommended time-out threshold, and the regions where time-out protocols are, or are not useful for better workflow. Measures of workflow coordination performance, including time-oriented and viability-oriented measures are discussed.     

Multi-agent Mediator architecture for distributed manufacturing

A generic Mediator architecture for distributed task planning and coordination has been developed using multi-agent paradigms. In this approach, agents function autonomously as independent computing processes, and dynamic virtual clusters coordinate the agent's activities and decision making. This coordination involves dynamically created coordination agents and resource agents concurrently. The Mediator architecture contains three levels of these coordination agents: the template mediator, the data-agent manager, and the active mediator. The template mediator is the top-level global coordinator. This agent contains both the templates and the cloning mechanism to create the successively lower-level agents. Task plans are decomposed successively into subtasks, which are allocated to dynamically created agent clusters coordinated through data-agent managers and active mediators. Coordination of agent activity takes place both among the clusters and within each cluster. The system dynamically adapts to evolving manufacturing tasks, with virtual agent clusters being created as needed, and destroyed when their tasks are completed. The mediator architecture and related mechanisms are demonstrated using an intelligent manufacturing scheduling application. Both the machines and the parts involved in this production system are considered as intelligent agents. These agents use a common language protocol based on the Knowledge Query Manipulation Language (KQML). The generic Mediator approach can be used for other distributed organizational systems beyond the intelligent manufacturing application it was originally developed for.     

Reactive multi-agent system for assembly cell control

This paper presents a multi-agent system for the control of manufacturing systems. The multi-agent system is designed to provide manufacturing control with three important characteristics: high robustness, quick response and good expandability. A prototype multi-agent-based control system has been developed for a flexible assembly cell as an example. The prototype multi-agent system contains several reactive agents. Each agent acts according to its built-in behaviours, and the behaviours are able to respond to stimuli from the manufacturing environment. A system architecture to implement the multi-agent-based control system is proposed and the coordination model of the reactive agents is developed. The generic agent structure is established for individual reactive agents, and the behaviours and the subsumption architecture of each agent are designed.     

Distributed Bayesian diagnosis for modular assembly systems—A case study

The growing interest in modular and distributed approaches for the design and control of intelligent manufacturing systems gives rise to new challenges. One of the major challenges that have not yet been well addressed is monitoring and diagnosis in distributed manufacturing systems. In this paper we propose the use of a multi-agent Bayesian framework known as Multiply Sectioned Bayesian Networks (MSBNs) as the basis for multi-agent distributed diagnosis in modular assembly systems. We use a close-to-industry case study to demonstrate how MSBNs can be used to build component-based Bayesian sub-models, how to verify the resultant models, and how to compile the multi-agent models into runtime structures to allow consistent multi-agent belief update and inference.     

Integration of the STEP-based assembly model and XML schema with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) for muti-agent based assembly evaluation

Assemblability analysis and evaluation plays a key role in assembly design, operation analysis and planning. In this paper, we propose an integrated intelligent approach and framework for evaluation of assemblability and assembly sequence for electro-mechanical assemblies (EMAs). The approach integrates the STEP (STandard for the Exchange of Product model data, officially ISO 10303)-based assembly model and XML schema with the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process for assembly evaluation. The evaluation structure covers not only the geometric and physical characteristics of the assembly parts but also the assembly operation data necessary to assemble the parts. The realization of the integration system is implemented through a multi-agent framework. Through integration with the STEP-based product modeling agent system, CAD agent system and assembly planning agent system, the developed assembly evaluation agent system can effectively incorporate, exchange, and share concurrent engineering knowledge into the preliminary design process so as to provide users with suggestions for improving a design and also helping obtain better design ideas. The applications show that the proposed approach and system are feasible. Received: July 2004 / Accepted: January 2006     

基于Agent 的集散递阶智能控制的研究

在智能控制系统分级递阶结构的基础上,将分级递阶的人为划分与集散控制系统的自然划分结合起来,提出了集散递阶智能控制的概念,并以Agent作为各级智能控制器,构成Agent系统（MAS）。针对集散递阶智能控制的特点,提出这类MAS的主从式协调机制,分析了系统中Agent共有的基本特性,阐述了其复合式结构和系统的实现方案。     

Applications of agent-based systems in intelligent manufacturing: An updated review

Agent technology has been recognized as a promising paradigm for next generation manufacturing systems. Researchers have attempted to apply agent technology to manufacturing enterprise integration, enterprise collaboration (including supply chain management and virtual enterprises), manufacturing process planning and scheduling, shop floor control, and to holonic manufacturing as an implementation methodology. This paper provides an update review on the recent achievements in these areas, and discusses some key issues in implementing agent-based manufacturing systems such as agent encapsulation, agent organization, agent coordination and negotiation, system dynamics, learning, optimization, security and privacy, tools and standards.     

基于多智能体的人机协作智能信息系统

综合集成研讨厅理论体系是作为处理开放的复杂巨系统的有关问题而提出的,其实质是一个人机协作的智能信息系统.本文主要探索研讨厅的实现途径,给出了基于网络的研讨厅的层次模型与系统结构,提出了基于内嵌客户/Agent/服务器的请求器-中介器-供应器模型的多智能体研讨厅的多层分布计算模型,并基于Java的智能信息Agent技术探讨了支持宏观经济决策的多智能体研讨厅的构架及工作机制.研究表明,基于Internet有关技术与Agent计算技术有可能实现研讨厅,并由于Agent技术的优势而可能得到较好的系统性能.