Increasing the reconfigurability of automated material flow systems using an agent-based control approach

The modularization of hardware and software is an approach to meet the demand for increasing flexibility and reconfigurability of automated material flow systems (aMFS) used, for example, in flexible production systems. In such aMFS, autonomous material flow modules (MFM), each controlled by a dedicated software agent, communicate with each other to coordinate and execute transportation tasks. The MFM are able to recognize adjacent MFM in the current aMFS layout and configure their interfaces depending on available connections to these neighbouring MFM. For the control of such aMFS an agent-based control architecture is proposed in this paper. In addition to the autonomous software agents of the MFM, a central coordinator is available to communicate general system information such as topology, status and planning information efficiently and consistently. In addition, the current system status of the aMFS is visualized in a human-machine interface to inform the operator of the current status and the decisions of the multi-agent system.