MANPro: mobile agent-based negotiation process for distributed intelligent manufacturing

Abstract

This paper examines negotiation procedures in an agent-based distributed shop floor control system (SFCS). A distributed SFCS is under a heterogeneous environment, which is controlled through negotiations between autonomous agents. The negotiation-based control can be considered as the core of a distributed control paradigm. An efficient information exchanging mechanism and an information model with reasonable structure are indispensable for effective negotiations. This paper proposes a novel negotiation mechanism, called a mobile agent-based negotiation process (MANPro), which applies a mobile agent system to the process of information exchange. Since using mobile agents allows each component to execute asynchronously and autonomously and to adapt dynamically to the execution environment, MANPro may guarantee autonomy of agents. Moreover, it is possible to build a fully distributed and autonomous SFCS by using MANPro. MANPro is based on the agent-based control architecture, which includes a communication architecture and an information architecture. The communication architecture provides the exchanging mechanism of information, defining functional modules to support the mechanism while the information architecture provides the framework for information modelling on negotiation, proposing information models required for introducing the ontology concept.