Agent and Cyber-Physical System Based Self-Organizing and Self-Adaptive Intelligent Shopfloor

TLDR

Customised production demands pose major challenges to traditional manufacturing systems. The authors propose an intelligent shopfloor framework that allocates resources in real time and mitigates disturbances. The framework comprises smart‑machine, self‑organising, and self‑adaptive models implemented in a multi‑agent cyber‑physical system, using gray‑relational analysis and hierarchy conflict resolution to enhance reconfigurability and responsiveness. A prototype demonstrates flexible, robust resource configuration and effective disturbance handling, providing a viable method for building autonomous factories with exception‑handling capabilities.

Abstract

The increasing demand of customized production results in huge challenges to the traditional manufacturing systems. In order to allocate resources timely according to the production requirements and to reduce disturbances, a framework for the future intelligent shopfloor is proposed in this paper. The framework consists of three primary models, namely the model of smart machine agent, the self-organizing model, and the self-adaptive model. A cyber-physical system for manufacturing shopfloor based on the multiagent technology is developed to realize the above-mentioned function models. Gray relational analysis and the hierarchy conflict resolution methods were applied to achieve the self-organizing and self-adaptive capabilities, thereby improving the reconfigurability and responsiveness of the shopfloor. A prototype system is developed, which has the adequate flexibility and robustness to configure resources and to deal with disturbances effectively. This research provides a feasible method for designing an autonomous factory with exception-handling capabilities.