Emmanuel Adam

Dynamic self-organization in holonic multi-agent manufacturing systems

Holonic multi-agent system evolution of the well-known ADACOR architecture.Behavioural and structural self-organization proposed.Nervousness control mechanism.Results show an improvement of the previous version of ADACOR. Nowadays, systems are becoming increasingly complex, mainly due to an exponential increase in the number of entities and their interconnections. Examples of these complex systems can be found in manufacturing, smart-grids, traffic control, logistics, economics and biology, among others. Due to this complexity, particularly in manufacturing, a lack of responsiveness in coping with demand for higher quality products, the drastic reduction in product lifecycles and the increasing need for product customization are being observed. Traditional solutions, based on central monolithic control structures, are becoming obsolete as they are not suitable for reacting and adapting to these perturbations. The decentralization of the complexity problem through simple, intelligent and autonomous entities, such as those found in multi-agent systems, is seen as a suitable methodology for tackling this challenge in industrial scenarios. Additionally, the use of biologically inspired self-organization concepts has proved to be suitable for being embedded in these approaches enabling better performances to be achieved. According to these principals, several approaches have been proposed but none can be truly embedded and extract all the potential of self-organization mechanisms. This paper proposes an evolution to the ADACOR holonic control architecture inspired by biological and evolutionary theories. In particular, a two-dimensional self-organization mechanism was designed taking the behavioural and structural vectors into consideration, thus allowing truly evolutionary and reconfigurable systems to be achieved that can cope with emergent requirements. The approach proposed is validated with two simulation use cases.

Reactive and energy-aware scheduling of flexible manufacturing systems using potential fields

This paper presents a reactive scheduling approach for flexible manufacturing systems, which integrates the overall energy consumption of the production. This work is justified by the growing needs of manufacturers for energy-aware control, due to new important environmental criteria, which holds true in the context of high reactivity. It makes production hard to predict. The proposed reactive scheduling model is based on potential fields. In this model, resources that sense the intentions from products are able to switch to standby mode to avoid useless energy consumption and emit fields to attract products. Simulations are provided, featuring three indicators: makespan, overall energy consumption and the number of resource switches. Real experiments were carried out to illustrate the feasibility of the approach on a real system and validate the simulation results.

Trends in Practical Applications of Agents and Multiagent Systems

Research on Agents and Multi-agent Systems has matured during the last decade and many effective applications of this technology are now deployed. PAAMS provides an international forum to presents and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. PAAMS started as a local initiative, but since grown to become the international yearly platform to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to Exchange their experience in the development and deployment of Agents and Multi-agents systems. PAAMS intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on the application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent based technology. It will promote a forum for discussion on how agent based techniques, methods and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs. Other stakeholders should be rewarded with a better understanding of the potential and challenges of the agent-oriented approach.This edition of PAAMS special sessions is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition was held in Salamanca, Spain, from 22nd to 24th May 2013.

Highlights on Practical Applications of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

Research on Agents and Multi-Agent Systems has matured during the last decade and many effective applications of this technology are now deployed. PAAMS provides an international forum to present and discuss the latest scientific developments and their effective applications, to assess the impact of the approach, and to facilitate technology transfer. PAAMS started as a local initiative, but has since grown to become THE international yearly platform to present, to discuss, and to disseminate the latest developments and the most important outcomes related to real-world applications. It provides a unique opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary experts, academics and practitioners together to exchange their experience in the development and deployment of Agents and Multi-Agent Systems. PAAMS intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on the application of multi-agent systems, to discuss and debate the major issues, and to showcase the latest systems using agent based technology. It will promote a forum for discussion on how agent-based techniques, methods, and tools help system designers to accomplish the mapping between available agent technology and application needs. Other stakeholders should be rewarded with a better understanding of the potential and challenges of the agent-oriented approach. This edition of PAAMS special sessions. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012. This edition of PAAMS special sessions. This symposium is organized by the Bioinformatics, Intelligent System and Educational Technology Research Group (http://bisite.usal.es/http://bisite.usal.es/) of the University of Salamanca. The present edition will be held in Salamanca, Spain, from 28th to 30th March 2012.

Nervousness in Dynamic Self-organized Holonic Multi-agent Systems

New production control paradigms, such as holonic and multi-agent systems, allow the development of more flexible and adaptive factories. In these distributed approaches, autonomous entities possess a partial view of the environment, being the decisions taken from the cooperation among them. The introduction of self-organization mechanisms to enhance the system adaptation may cause the system instability when trying to constantly adapt their behaviours, which can drive the system to fall into a chaotic behaviour. This paper proposes a nervousness control mechanism based on the classical Proportional, Integral and Derivative feedback loop controllers to support the system self-organization. The validation of the proposed model is made through the simulation of a flexible manufacturing system.

Simulation in Contexts Involving an Interactive Table and Tangible Objects

By using an interactive table, it is possible to interact with several people (decision-makers) in a simultaneous and collaborative way, around the table, during a simulation session. Thanks to the RFID technology with which the table is fitted, it is possible to give tangible objects a unique identity to include and to consider them in the simulation. The paper describes a context model, which takes into consideration the specificities related to interactive tables. The TangiSense interactive table is presented; it is connected to a multi-agent system making it possible to give the table a certain level of adaptation: each tangible object can be associated to an agent which can bring roles to the object (i.e., the roles are the equivalent of a set of behaviors). The multi-agent system proposed in this paper is modeled according to an architecture adapted to the exploitation of tangible and virtual objects during simulation on an interactive table. A case study is presented; it concerns a simulation of road traffic management. The illustrations give an outline of the potentialities of the simulation system as regards the context-awareness aspect, following both the actions of the decision-makers implied in simulation, and the agents composing the road traffic simulation.

Role-based manufacturing control in a holonic multi-agent system

Multi-agent systems (MAS) are particularly adapted to deal with dynamic distributed environments and are typically used to manage business workflows or data flows in manufacturing systems. From a control perspective, holonic representation allows both the informational and the physical parts in such manufacturing systems to be modelled. In this article, we focus on the notion of role in holonic MAS (HoloMAS) and its contribution to the adaptive control of manufacturing systems. We validated our HoloMAS proposal using simulations and through a real implementation on a flexible assembly cell in our university lab. Our results clearly show that the notion of role helps to adapt and manage perturbations.

A Multi-Agent System Approach for Interactive Table Using RFID

This paper presents a model of Multi-Agent System dedicated to the management of a tabletop that detects traceable objects using RFID technology, which are moved on the table by a set of users during application. In addition, virtual objects can interact with tangible objects. We propose a new model (MAM4IT) to manage this kind of object with situated agents (that we call tangible agents) based on the notion of dynamic roles. The roles will be able to evolve during the application and adapt their behaviors according to the environment and the unpredictable actions of users. In this situation the agents are able to compose new roles. A first concrete case study based on road traffic shows the interaction between tangible and virtual agents.

HOMASCOW: a holonic multi-agent system for cooperative work

Assistance tools for actors of cooperative systems, which are often centralized are increasingly designed to adhere to the system organization using a distributed architecture. However, generally these systems have difficulty in managing data coherency at the global level. In answer to this problem, we turned towards a particular organizational model: holonic systems. This concept has guided us in the design of the Holonic Multi-Agent System (HOLOMAS), which offers a good compromise between the distribution of knowledge and control centralization. In fact, the use of the HOLOMAS appeared to be necessary following the study of the procedures used in the patent department of a large company.

Flexible Hierarchical Organisation of Role Based Agents

MAS are particularly adapted to deal with distributed and dynamic environment. The management of business workflow, or data flow, is typically a good application field for them. This kind of application requires centralization of the data control and flexibility to change of the network. By taking inspiration from the Holonic Multi-Agent organisations (that are particular pyramidal organisations where agents of a layer (having the same coordinator) are able to communicate and to negotiate directly between them), and working mechanisms of the complex human organisations, we propose a framework for holonic multi-agent organizations, able to growth and distribute roles and where agents have adaptable roles.