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Holons & Agents: Recent Developments and Mutual Impacts

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Multi-Agent Systems and Applications II (ACAI 2001)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2322))

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Abstract

This position paper briefly gathers together the recent trends in the related aras of holonic systems and multi-agent systems with the main goal to present the Holonic Manufacturing Systems area to the MAS community. The vision of a Holonic Factory is very near to being realized, and draws a number of its concepts from the world of multi-agent systems. That is why many similarities can be identified between these two areas, and many opportunities exist for the crossover of research results. The IEC 61499 standard for real-time function-block oriented holonic control was completed recently. It has been recognized by the holonic manufacturing system community that this standard is able to help in solving low-level control tasks only. That is, where the time horizon of decisions made by holons (e.g. concerning stopping the physical movement of robots, or executing safety-critical tasks) is in the range of microseconds to seconds. Yet this standard does not address all the topics needed to construct an intelligent agile factory. The MAS area can significantly help to avoid the current deadlocks in HMS research. In terms of mutual impacts, holonic systems are based on pragmatic manufacturing control requirements, and so they can offer a wealth of attractive opportunities for deploying agent-based ideas into real industrial settings. And vice versa, the application of agents into manufacturing domains, connected with physical production, should motivate a MAS community that has (until now) concentrated on just information agents.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gerstner Laboratory, Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

    Vladimir Mařík & Michal Pěchouček

  2. Rockwell Automation Research Center, Prague

    Vladimir Mařík

  3. Agent Oriented Software, Cambridge, UK

    Martyn Fletcher

Authors
  1. Vladimir Mařík
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  2. Martyn Fletcher
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  3. Michal Pěchouček
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University, 166 27, Prague 6, Czech Republic

    Vladimír Mařík , Olga Štěpánková  & Hana Krautwurmová ,  & 

  2. Rockwell Automation Research Center Prague, Americka 22, 120 00, Prague 2, Czech Republic

    Vladimír Mařík

  3. Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    Michael Luck

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Mařík, V., Fletcher, M., Pěchouček, M. (2002). Holons & Agents: Recent Developments and Mutual Impacts. In: Mařík, V., Štěpánková, O., Krautwurmová, H., Luck, M. (eds) Multi-Agent Systems and Applications II. ACAI 2001. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2322. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45982-0_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45982-0_16

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