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Agent Architectures to Support Manufacturing |
Agent architectures are the enabling technology to facilitate the integration of heterogeneous software tools to support an agile manufacturing information infrastructure. Such software includes legacy software, data bases, knowledge bases, commercial CAD/CAM software, and newly developed software in an agile manufacturing environment. In short agents logically unify heterogeneous distributed information.
To accomplish the goals of concurrent engineering, CAD tools must be integrated with simulation and modeling software to validate the design prior to manufacturing a part. We are wrapping existing design codes in agent wrappers and developing agent interfaces to CAD packages.
CAD Tools 
Once the design of a part has been validated the part can be manufactured. Within the IMTL manufacturing facility, the CNC machines, robots, tools databases, and information about the welding cell must be integrated such that the components can send and receive data and knowledge. Within the cell, the cell status agent can send and receive messages in an agent communication language from agents interfacing with each machine tool. Furthermore the agent architecture facilitates the collection, transmission, and storage of sensor data from the machine tools. The details of the IMTL software architecture can be found here. For more information about the IMTL manufacturing technology or the IMTL vision, go to the IMTL information Web pages.
Robot 
For a good overview of the power of agent architectures in engineering applications, visit the Concur project web pages at Stanford University's Center for Design Research.
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