An Agent-Based System for Automated Configuration and Coordination of Robotic Operations in Real Time—A Case Study on a Car Floor Welding Process

Abstract

This paper investigates the feasibility of using an agent-based framework to configure, control and coordinate dynamic, real-time robotic operations with the use of ontology manufacturing principles. Production automation agents use ontology models that represent the knowledge in a manufacturing environment for control and configuration purposes. The ontological representation of the production environment is discussed. Using this framework, the manufacturing resources are capable of autonomously embedding themselves into the existing manufacturing enterprise with minimal human intervention, while, at the same time, the coordination of manufacturing operations is achieved without extensive human involvement. The specific framework was implemented, tested and validated in a feasibility study upon a laboratory robotic assembly cell with typical industrial components, using real data derived from a car-floor welding process.

From CAD to Plug & Produce - A generic structure for the integration of standard industrial robots into agents

“…The cameras must be located manually in a way that markers can be detected. Cameras can be avoided by using an ontological representation of the manufacturing environment [45]. Automation Markup Language (AML) is used to represent models of manufacturing equipment that originate from CAD [46,47].…”

An Intelligent System to Ensure Interoperability for the Dairy Farm Business Model

“…Rakib and Uddin Faruqui [27] employed ontology-driven rules to simply model real-world rules. Recently, Makris et al [28] used ontologies for control and configuration purposes.…”

Robot Coordination: Aeronautic Use Cases Handling Large Parts

“…The increase in global marketing of different products, technologies, processes, and services has produced the need to adjust the manufacturing techniques [1][2][3][4]. In order to increase automation, new systems should use adaptable, reconfigurable, and reliable production systems [1,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. Nevertheless, in the majority of sectors, not all jobs can be automated, because they require individuals with specific skills-e.g., creativity, cognitive ability-for complex handling or assembly operations.…”

“…An advantage of multi-robot cooperation resides in the possibility of operating independently or together [3,7,[27][28][29][30][31], in either coordinated/cooperative or uncoordinated tasks [32]. In the first type of operation, the robots follow one another, and the robots and objects interact during the task.…”