On the Sensorial Integration for a Holonic Manufacturing System

The paper proposes a new method for sensorial integration within manufacturing systems. The control scheme is a holonic one, namely a PROSA reference architecture is considered. Some principles regarding the way the coordination and planning mechanisms have to be adapted for an enhanced sensorial integration are investigated. These refer a plan-space planning approach that operates with partially specified plans, and an extended form of the contract net protocol used to manage the holons´ agents cooperation activities. The agent based implementation, which was made in the Jack software environment, was a further support for the sensorial information use by the holonic system deliberative components.