Affiliations: [a] Integrated Manufacturing Technologies Institute, National Research Council of Canada, 800 Collip Circle London, Ontario, Canada N6G 4X8. E-mail: [email protected] | [b] Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive N.W., Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4. Tel.: +1 403 220 5787; Fax: +1 403 282 8406; E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] | [c] Rockwell Automation, 24800 Tungsten Road, Cleveland, OH 44117, USA. E-mail: [email protected]
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author.
Abstract: Future manufacturing systems will be required to be agile, flexible and fault-tolerant. Development of these next-generation systems will not only require new approaches, but also new ways of thinking about these systems. This paper describes a real-time control architecture for distributed intelligent control that combines the emerging IEC-1499 standard for distributed control with the holonic control paradigm. The focus of the paper is on a generic control system designer for the lower process/machine control layer of this real-time control architecture. This paper outlines related research into control system architecture using multi-agent negotiation and cooperation, then describes the intelligent control function design interface and automatic control code generation.
Keywords: multi-agent systems, intelligent manufacturing, real-time distributed control, holonic control
