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Process Rescheduling and Path Planning Using Automation Agents

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Recent Advances in Robotics and Automation

Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 480))

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Abstract

The process industry faces a permanently changing environment, where sudden component failures can significantly influence the system performance if not treated in an appropriate amount of time. Moreover, current market trends have to be met such as short production times, a low price as well as a broad spectrum of product and process varieties. Distributed intelligent control systems based on agent technologies are seen as a promising approach to handle the dynamics in large complex systems. In this chapter, we present a multi-agent system architecture capable to answer to the major requirements in the process domain. The architecture is based on agents with diverse responsibilities as well as tasks and separates the control software of agents controlling hardware components into two levels, the high level control and the low level control. Our system architecture has also the ability to flexibly reschedule allocated jobs in the case of resource breakdowns in order to minimize downtimes. This goes hand in hand with a dynamic path finding algorithm to enhance the flexibility of transport tasks. The system is currently tested and evaluated in the Odo Struger Laboratory at the Automation and Control Institute.

Based on “Advanced Process Automation Using Automation Agents”, by Munir Merdan, Wilfried Lepuschitz, and Emilian Axinia which appeared in the Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Automation, Robotics and Applications (ICARA 2011) © 2011 IEEE.

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) project PrOnto (829576) under the BRIDGE program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Vienna University of Technology, Automation and Control Institute, Vienna, Austria

    Munir Merdan, Wilfried Lepuschitz & Benjamin Groessing

  2. COPA-DATA GmbH, Karolingerstrasse 7b, 5020, Salzburg, Austria

    Markus Helbok

Authors
  1. Munir Merdan
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  2. Wilfried Lepuschitz
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  3. Benjamin Groessing
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  4. Markus Helbok
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Correspondence to Munir Merdan .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering &, Advanced Technology (SEAT), Massey University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

    Gourab Sen Gupta

  2. , School of Engineering and Advanced Techn, Massey University, Private Bag 11 222, Palmerston North, 4442, New Zealand

    Donald Bailey

  3. , Saigon South Campus, RMIT International University, Nguyen Van Linh City 702, Ho Chi Minh City, 70000, Vietnam

    Serge Demidenko

  4. , School of Engineering and Computer Scien, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand

    Dale Carnegie

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Merdan, M., Lepuschitz, W., Groessing, B., Helbok, M. (2013). Process Rescheduling and Path Planning Using Automation Agents. In: Sen Gupta, G., Bailey, D., Demidenko, S., Carnegie, D. (eds) Recent Advances in Robotics and Automation. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 480. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37387-9_5

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