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W. Lepuschitz, B. Groessing, E. Axinia, M. Merdan:
"Phase Agents and Dynamic Routing for Batch Process Automation";
Vortrag: 6th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems, Prague, Czech Republic; 26.08.2013 - 28.08.2013; in: "Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Industrial Applications of Holonic and Multi-Agent Systems", (2013), ISBN: 978-3-642-40089-6; S. 37 - 48.

Currently applied process automation solutions rely on predefined
control recipes with preprogrammed material transfer routes in
the subjacent control software. Thus, the flexibility is limited with regard
to dynamic environment conditions such as a change of production job
priorities or a modification of the system layout. In this context, agent
technology is seen as a promising approach for providing such flexibility.
This paper presents a multi-agent system for batch process automation,
which introduces the concept of phase agents for controlling the physical
equipment. The phase agents incorporate control software based on
the standard IEC 61131 for PLC programming in consideration of compliance
to the standard IEC 61512 Batch Control. In the context of
material transfers, a route finding algorithm is introduced for dynamically
calculating suitable routes. Moreover, demonstration applications
are presented to show the feasibility of the approach.

Agent technology, batch process, flexible automation, dynamic routing.