An agent-based Flexible Manufacturing System controller with Petri-net enabled algebraic deadlock avoidance
Sotirios Messinis, George-Christopher Vosniakos
Abstract
This work focuses on the efficient design of a controller for a Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS) using Agents. The necessary agents were selected and defined according to the Design of Agent-based Production Control Systems (DACS) methodology. The Contract Net Protocol (CNP) was applied for agent communication and interaction. A particular Algebraic Deadlock Avoidance Policy (DAP) is efficiently embedded into CNP. As a result the multi agent system is live and deadlock–free. Feasibility analysis of the controller was performed by exploiting Resource Allocation Systems techniques being defined in the framework of Petri Net theory. The controller is demonstrated in simulation mode in the framework of the Java Agent Development Framework (JADE) system