Agent-based Intelligent Control System Design for Real-time Distributed Manufacturing Environments

Abstract

This research focuses on development of a generic agent-based intelligent control system designer for realtime distributed manufacturing environments. The paper first describes related research into distributed manufacturing and real-time control system, then reports on the intelligent control function design interface and automatic control code generation. Keywords: Multi-agent, manufacturing, real-time control, function block, automatic code generation. 1. INTRODUCTION Over the last several decades, computer control of manufacturing systems has been the focus of extensive research. Advances in microprocessor, computing, networking and interfacing technologies have improved capabilities of industrial automation and control systems substantially over this period. However, these control systems are proprietary and still have problems in areas such as interoperability, scalability, and lack of standard user interfaces. The development of open architecture control systems addresses som...