Holonic And Multi Agent Systems For Manufacturing

This volume constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems held in September 2007. The 39 full papers were selected from among 63 submissions. They are organized into topical sections covering theoretical and methodological issues, algorithms and technologies, implementation and validation, applications, and supply chain management.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2011, held in Toulouse, France, August 29-31, 2011. The 25 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 36 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on industrial agents, simulation and modelling, planning and scheduling, smart technical systems, and MAS for unmanned aerial vehicles.

The increasing complexity of manufacturing systems as well as the overall demands for flexible and fault-tolerant control of production processes stimulates (among many others) two key emerging technologies that are already making an important breakthrough in the field of intelligent manufacturing, control, and diagnostics. These two paradigms are: • the holonic approach based on the event-driven control strategy, usually aimed at modular control systems that are directly physically linked with the manufacturing hardware equipment, and • the multi-agent approach developed in the area of distributed information processing. The research communities working in both these fields are approaching the problem of intelligent manufacturing from different viewpoints and, until recently, to a certain extent, in an independent way. We can however observe quite a clear convergence of these fields in the last few years: the communities have started to cooperate, joining efforts to solve the painful problems involved in achieving effective industrial practice. We can see convergence in the terminology, standards and methods being applied.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, HoloMAS 2005, held in Copenhagen, Denmark in August 2005. The 23 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 40 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on theoretical and methodological issues, algorithms and technologies, implementation and validation aspects, applications, and supply chain management.

The research of holonic and agent-based systems is developing very rapidly. The community around this R&D topic is also growing fast - despite the fact that the real-life practical implementations of such systems are still surprisingly rare. H- ever, the managers in different branches of industry feel that the holonic and agent-based systems represent the only way of managing and controlling very c- plex, highly distributed systems exploring vast volumes of accumulated knowledge. The relevant research and development activities gain more and more visible support from both industry as well as public sectors. Quite naturally, the number of scientific events aimed at the subject field is also growing rapidly. We see new lines of conf- ences like INDIN, we observe a strong focus of the already well-established conferences, e. g. , INCOM or ETFA, being shifted toward holonic and agent-based manufacturing systems. We see an increased interest of the IEEE System, Man and Cybernetics Society, especially its Technical Committee on Distributed Intelligent Systems which leverages the experience gathered by the members of the former Ho- nic Manufacuting Systems (HMS) consortium. We see a clear orientation of the IEEE SMC Transactions, part C, toward applications of agent-oriented solutions. The same is true of the International Journal on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (JAAMAS). This is a really good sign of the increasing importance of the field.

The increasing complexity of manufacturing systems as well as the overall demands for flexible and fault-tolerant control of production processes stimulates (among many others) two key emerging technologies that are already making an important breakthrough in the field of intelligent manufacturing, control, and diagnostics. These two paradigms are: • the holonic approach based on the event-driven control strategy, usually aimed at modular control systems that are directly physically linked with the manufacturing hardware equipment, and • the multi-agent approach developed in the area of distributed information processing. The research communities working in both these fields are approaching the problem of intelligent manufacturing from different viewpoints and, until recently, to a certain extent, in an independent way. We can however observe quite a clear convergence of these fields in the last few years: the communities have started to cooperate, joining efforts to solve the painful problems involved in achieving effective industrial practice. We can see convergence in the terminology, standards and methods being applied.

The research of holonic and agent-based systems is developing rapidly, as is the community around this R&D topic. Despite the fact that real-life practical implementations of such systems remain surprisingly rare, the leaders in different branches of industry feel that the holonic and agent-based systems represent the only way to manage and control very complex, highly distributed systems in the future. The relevant R&D gains more and more support from both industry as well as academic sources. Quite naturally, the number of scientific events aimed at the subject field is also growing rapidly. We can see new lines of conferences like INDIN, while we can observe a strong focus of the already well-established conferences, like INCOM or ETFA, being shifted toward holonic and agent-based manufacturing systems. This is a good sign of the increasing recognition and importance of the field. We are convinced of the worth and importance of the continuation of the HoloMAS events, which have served as pioneering melting pots for ideas connected with distributed decision making and control in industry and which have already gained international reputation.