Agent based approach for a real-time shop floor control

In this paper we present an application of the multiagent approach to the control of a flexible manufacturing cell. It is an actor-based system which is distributed physically on a set of sites, and is composed of a set of cognitive and reactive agents which coordinate their tasks to carry out the dynamic control and the scheduling of the manufacturing system. The coordination of the actions of the agents is not dedicated to a central superintendent agent, but rather emerges from the interaction of these combined agents. This paper first presents the principle of the distributed hierarchical control. It then details the multi-agent structure used to support this control. Finally it details the implementation procedure and some results of validation.