Ulteriori informazioni
The ability of production companies to rapidly develop and deploy effective and efficient control systems is critical for success in the consumer-driven environment of contemporary manufacturing. This book presents a novel approach to the design of manufacturing control systems, based around the idea of agents, semiautonomous decision makers that cooperate to process goods and meet orders. This new methodology is DACS - Designing Agent-based Control Systems.
Developed at DaimlerChrysler's research labs in Berlin, DACS is the first methodology specifically produced for the design of agent-based control systems. Beginning with a detailed overview of agent technologies, manufacturing control, and design methodologies, the book explains the DACS methodology and illustrates it by way of detailed case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in agent systems, manufacturing control, and software methodologies.
Sommario
1 Introduction.- 2 Agent-Based Production Control.- 3 Design Methodologies.- 4 The DACS Methodology for Production Control.- 5 Evaluation of the DACS Methodology.- 6 Conclusion.- Appendix A. Example Characterisations.- A.1 Voting.- A.1.1 The plurality voting protocol.- A.1.2 The Clarke tax protocol.- A.2 Negotiation.- A.2.1 Service-oriented negotiation.- A.2.2 The monotonic concession protocol.- A.2.3 The DECIDE conflict resolution protocol.- A.3 Auctions.- A.3.1 The English auction.- A.3.2 The contract-net protocol.- A.3.3 The continuous double auction.- A.4 Distributed constraint satisfaction.- A.4.1 Asynchronous backtracking search.- A.5 Coalition formation.- A.6 Co-ordination of multi-agent plans.- A.6.1 Partial global planning.- A.6.2 Generalised partial global planning.- A.6.3 Consensus-based distributed planning.- A.7 Application-specific interaction protocols.- A.7.1 Kowest work-in-process control protocol.- A.8 Simple interaction protocols.- A.8.1 Requesting action.- A.9 Social laws.- Appendix B. Industrial Test Case.- B.1 Specification of the production control problem.- B.1.1 Production system.- B.1.2 Production operation conditions.- B.1.3 Control interfaces.- B.1.4 Production goals and requirements.- B.2 Analysis of decision making.- B.2.1 Identification of effectoric decisions.- B.2.2 Identification of decision dependencies.- B.3 Identification of agents.- B.3.1 Improving the decision model.- B.3.2 Clustering of decision tasks.- B.4 Selection of interaction protocols.- B.4.7 Summary.- B.5 Results from the test case.- B.6 Summary of the test case.- Appendix C. Third-Party Reviews.- C.1 Review by Ilka Lehweß-Litzmann.- C.2 Review by Laura Obretin.- C.3 Review by Schneider Electric.- C.4 Review by the DaimlerChrysler.- List of Figures.- List of Tables.-References.
Info autore
Michael Wooldridge is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Liverpool, UK. He obtained his PhD in 1992 for work in the theory of multiagent systems and has, since then, been active in multiagent systems research.
Riassunto
Developed at DaimlerChrysler’s research labs in Berlin, DACS (Designing Agent-based Control Systems) is the first methodology specifically produced for the design of agent-based control systems. Beginning with a detailed overview of agent technologies, manufacturing control, and design methodologies, the book explains the DACS methodology and illustrates it by way of detailed case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and practitioners in agent systems, manufacturing control, and software methodologies.
Testo aggiuntivo
From the reviews:
"This book provides a good introductory treatment of multiagent technology and production control systems. … This book also provides useful and timely references for manufacturing control engineers, computer scientists, and other researchers who are interested in studying multiagent systems and manufacturing control. … In conclusion, this book is well organized and easy to read. … This book is also an excellent reference to many of research efforts currently under way addressing various aspects of agent-based manufacturing control." (Dr. J. Ren, Robotica, Vol. 23, 2005)
"This is another book in the Springer Series on Agent Technology … . An excellent reference section finally completes, with a book index, an essential text for anyone working in this field. … All new methodology such as DACS deserves to be introduced in a competent manner and there is no doubt that the authors have achieved their aims and also their stated goal of enabling a control engineer with little experience to-apply successfully the results of their researches." (D. M. Hutton, Kybernetes, Vol. 35 (9), 2006)
Relazione
From the reviews:
"This book provides a good introductory treatment of multiagent technology and production control systems. ... This book also provides useful and timely references for manufacturing control engineers, computer scientists, and other researchers who are interested in studying multiagent systems and manufacturing control. ... In conclusion, this book is well organized and easy to read. ... This book is also an excellent reference to many of research efforts currently under way addressing various aspects of agent-based manufacturing control." (Dr. J. Ren, Robotica, Vol. 23, 2005)
"This is another book in the Springer Series on Agent Technology ... . An excellent reference section finally completes, with a book index, an essential text for anyone working in this field. ... All new methodology such as DACS deserves to be introduced in a competent manner and there is no doubt that the authors have achieved their aims and also their stated goal of enabling a control engineer with little experience to-apply successfully the results of their researches." (D. M. Hutton, Kybernetes, Vol. 35 (9), 2006)
