Cooperating Agents for Holonic Manufacturing

Abstract

In a Cooperating Knowledge Based System (CKBS) an agent is modelled as an autonomous and cooperative knowledge based system, capable of executing some tasks in the most effective Way, using an engineering paradigm. The paper presents an abstract CKBS model, using Holonic Manufactining Systems (HMS) as an application domain. HMS is a major international project on agent-based manufacturing, where a holon is a unit of production and is a type of agent, cooperating with other agents in task sharing. This paper describes a highly distributed architecture of the model (designed to provide systems robustness and fault-tolerance) and the necessary computational model required to ensure the correct systems behaviour.