Collaboration between industrial agents of encapsulated control components

Abstract

The technological challenges of Industry 4.0 in the field of smart manufacturing require addressing the increasing complexity of automated production systems to optimize production. To this end, this work presents a distributed and collaborative control strategy based on industrial agents. Thus, an industrial agent is proposed, which endows encapsulated control units with intelligence, providing them with the ability to negotiate and coordinate with other agents as well as with other applications related to plant control and supervision. These capabilities are described through their integration into a distributed control architecture to meet production objectives. Its applicability is demonstrated in the proof of concept that is part of a flexible assembly cell. This industrial agent approach allows the adoption of an Industry 4.0 enabling technology without high costs.