Multi-agent architecture for distributed monitoring in flexible manufacturing systems (FMS)

This paper describes an intelligent distributed monitoring architecture for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) based on the multi-agent paradigm. The proposed approach models the FMS by a society of cognitive agents, which monitor a set of heterogeneous resources. These agents have sufficient knowledge for the decision-making and they co-operate together in order to achieve the FMS monitoring functions. The originality of this approach resides in the total distribution of the monitoring functions over the agents and the co-operation of these agents by the contract net protocol for the real-time supervision. These characteristics improve flexibility, extensibility, real-time running, autonomy, fast reaction to faults, and development cost. Experimental results developed in simulation show the feasibility and the potentialities of the proposed multi-agent architecture for distributed monitoring where concepts such us flexibility, co-ordination, reactivity and integration are involved.