Distributed multi-agent scheduling and control system for robotic flexible assembly cells

Abderraouf Maoudj (), Brahim Bouzouia (), Abdelfetah Hentout (), Ahmed Kouider () and Redouane Toumi ()
Additional contact information
Abderraouf Maoudj: Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées (CDTA)
Brahim Bouzouia: Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées (CDTA)
Abdelfetah Hentout: Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées (CDTA)
Ahmed Kouider: Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées (CDTA)
Redouane Toumi: Université des sciences et de la technologie Houari-Boumédiène (USTHB)

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 2019, vol. 30, issue 4, No 8, 1629-1644

Abstract: Abstract This paper deals with the development of a distributed multi-agent system (DMAS) for scheduling and controlling Robotic Flexible Assembly Cells (RFAC). In the proposed system, an approach for solving one of the most challenging decisional problems in RFAC is proposed and implemented. This problem is related to the products operations scheduling which requires their allocation and sequencing on the robots, while satisfying products and robots constraints under makespan minimization. The proposed DMAS addresses this challenge by using a cooperative approach supported by three kinds of autonomous control agents: supervisory agent, local agents, and remote agents. These agents interact by a negotiation protocol based on common dispatching rules for coordinating their individual decisions, satisfying their local objective and providing an optimized global solution. Moreover, because of the dynamic nature of the assembly systems, it is imperative to consider external disturbances on production scheduling and to solve the related issues. Consequently, DMAS has the ability to respond and manage some dynamic events that may occur in the cells such as unexpected robot breakdown or dynamic products arrivals. Computational results on benchmarks show the effectiveness and the robustness of the proposed system.

Keywords: Distributed multi-agent systems; Scheduling problem; Robotic flexible assembly cells; Dispatching rules; Dynamic events (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10845-017-1345-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:joinma:v:30:y:2019:i:4:d:10.1007_s10845-017-1345-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10845

DOI: 10.1007/s10845-017-1345-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing is currently edited by Andrew Kusiak

More articles in Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().