Negotiating task decomposition and allocation using partial global planning
Distributed Artificial Intelligence (Vol. 2)
Introduction to the attribute driven design method
ICSE '01 Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering
Evaluating software architectures: methods and case studies
Evaluating software architectures: methods and case studies
Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming
Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming
The Gaia Methodology for Agent-Oriented Analysis and Design
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Software Architecture in Practice
Software Architecture in Practice
Multiagent Systems for Manufacturing Control
Multiagent Systems for Manufacturing Control
Decentralized control of E'GV transportation systems
Proceedings of the fourth international joint conference on Autonomous agents and multiagent systems
Middleware for Protocol-Based Coordination in Mobile Applications
IEEE Distributed Systems Online
Self-Managed Systems: an Architectural Challenge
FOSE '07 2007 Future of Software Engineering
The Contract Net Protocol: High-Level Communication and Control in a Distributed Problem Solver
IEEE Transactions on Computers
Designing Software for Ease of Extension and Contraction
IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering
Architectural design of a situated multiagent system for controlling automatic guided vehicles
International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
A field-based versus a protocol-based approach for adaptive task assignment
Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems
Applying the ATAM to an architecture for decentralized control of a transportation system
QoSA'06 Proceedings of the Second international conference on Quality of Software Architectures
A design process for adaptive behavior of situated agents
AOSE'04 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
How to get multi-agent systems accepted in industry?
International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
Hi-index | 0.00 |
An automatic guided vehicle (AGV) transportation system is a fully automated system that provides logistic services in an industrial environment such as a warehouse or a factory. Traditionally, the AGVs that execute the transportation tasks are controlled by a central server via wireless communication. In a joint effort between Egemin, an industrial manufacturer of AGV transportation systems, and DistriNet Labs research at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, we developed an innovative decentralized architecture for controlling AGVs. The driving motivations behind decentralizing the control of AGVs were new and future quality requirements such as flexibility and openness. At the software architectural level, the AGV control system is structured as a multi-agent system; the detailed design and implementation is object-oriented. In this paper, we report our experiences with developing the agent-based control system for AGVs. Starting from system requirements, we give an overview of the software architecture and we zoom in on a number of concrete functionalities. We reflect on our experiences and report lessons learned from applying multi-agent systems for real-world AGV control.