A COMPARISON OF THREE AGENT BASED CONTROL SYSTEMS

The objective of this paper is to compare the characteristics of the agent based control architectures for three production situations. A manufacturing system can be seen as a collection of autonomous, problem solving agents which interact when they have interdependencies. The agent based control systems as applied in the Polytechnics Midden-Brabant, Fontys University, and Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands are compared. The concept of having workstation agents and job agents, rather than only workstation agents, is a sensible one. Compared to previously implemented control architectures, the agent based system is more robust and flexible. The suitability of an agent based approach is dependent on characteristics of the production system, such as uncertainty in product specifications