Multi-agent based dynamic scheduling for a flexible assembly system

Abstract

This paper proposes a multi-agent based dynamic scheduling approach for a flexible assembly system. We first introduce a flexible control system developed by Intelligent Robotics and Automation Laboratory in National Taiwan University. Based on that control system, the agents can communicate with each other conveniently. A generic agent architecture is proposed to model the pieces of equipment in the flexible assembly system. With a distributed architecture, the agents make their scheduling decisions using their local rule base. The agents acquire the resources following the distributed resource allocation protocol. The scheduling complexity is reduced to meet the real-time response requirement in the applications for flexible automated production. The present work is applied to the experimental robotized flexible assembly system in the above laboratory.