Cooperative engineering of agent-based process control algorithm

Abstract

Process control algorithms constitute a specific software model, as they have well-defined and constant sets of inputs and outputs, and perform calculations cyclically in real time. Therefore, the algorithms rarely are implemented otherwise than embedded in the low level control instrumentation. This paper proposes a departure from this well-known approach in order to apply multiagent system directly in the control layer. While this novel approach creates few issues requiring resolving, such as the need to develop an agent-based software operating in real time, it also provides the crucial benefit i.e. the possibility of developing the modules of the control algorithm by experts from different fields, which allows for cooperative dynamic engineering of a control algorithm. The resulting methodology allows to include more modern and advanced solutions from various fields of control science than it is possible in the case of the classical approach.