An automation agent architecture with a reflective world model in manufacturing systems

Manufacturing systems have become very complex, and the traditional hierarchical and centralized approaches are not adequate any more. Decentralized approaches are considered promising, but they are not yet sufficiently understood for widespread industrial application. In particular, agent-based control has not yet achieved its potential, so that more research is still required. Therefore, we propose a new architecture of automation agents. Such an agent is composed of a hardware component and a software component, where the hardware component can be viewed as an embodiment of this software component in its manufacturing environment. An important part of the software component is a world model repository of the automation agent. As a special innovation, the world model is reflective in the sense, that it contains a symbolic representation of the automation agent and of its relations to its environment as well. The world model repository is made up of representations of situations and activities. In summary, we propose an automation agent architecture with a reflective world model for use in manufacturing systems.