A Pattern-Based Coordination and Test Framework for Multi-Agent Simulation of Production Automation Systems

Abstract

Production automation systems consist of many entities (like robots and shuttles) that interact in complex ways to provide the overall system functionality like product assembly. Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) can simulate these system entities and their interactions to better understand the system behavior according to production strategies and system configuration, which are otherwise hard to determine before their (costly) implementation. A main challenge is to coordinate the groups of agents effectively to reach a common production goal, e.g., fast and robust delivery on customer orders for assembling a set of products. In this paper, we introduce the pattern-based extension of the MAS-based manufacturing agent simulation tool (MAST) to support the simulation and evaluation of business processes in an assembly workshop: a layered coordination and test framework has been implemented and evaluated in cooperation with industry partners. Domain experts found the coordination patterns usable and useful to elicit their knowledge. The test framework allowed exploring the effects of production strategies on the system 30 times faster than with a real-world hardware workshop.

Product and process patterns for agent-based modelling and simulation

“…Master-Slave was previously addressed in the discussion of Moser et al (2010) recommendations. Plan is related to the Master-Slave pattern and is intended to synchronize a series of potentially concurrent agent activities.…”

Research of the Control Strategy for Concurrency and Conflict of the CVM Based on the Predicted Retardation

“…Fig. 5 The virtual scene in a certain collaborative maintenance system Object-oriented Technology (short for OOT) has effective mechanism such as inherit, encapsulation, information hiding etc, which makes the programming more efficient, flexible, extensible and easily modified [8]. This paper performs the programming design, resorting to the object-oriented design thought and general structure, the whole project mainly is consisted of the OLE database, external DLL, internal code.…”

Product design patterns for agent-based modeling

“…We discuss the rest of Nguyen, Ricken, and Wong's patterns later in the section on applied patterns. Moser, Merdan, and Biffl (2010) use two standard software design patterns, namely Master-Slave and Blackboard, to develop a factory automation simulator. Master-Slave is primarily a concurrent computing pattern intended to take advantage of multiple processors.…”

“…The task patterns are Master-Slave and Plan. Master-Slave was previously ad-dressed in the discussion of Moser, Merdan, and Biffl (2010) recommendations. Plan is related to the Master-Slave pattern and is intended to synchronize a series potentially concurrent agent activities.…”