Title: Real-time control of decentralised autonomous flexible manufacturing systems by using memory and oblivion

Authors: Hidehiko Yamamoto, Rizauddin Bin Ramli

Addresses: Department of Human and Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Gifu University, Japan. ' Department of Human and Information Systems, Faculty of Engineering, Gifu University, Japan

Abstract: This paper describes a method that uses memory to determine a priority ranking for competing hypotheses. The aim is to increase the reasoning efficiency of a system which controls Automatic Guided Vehicles (AGVs) in Autonomous Decentralised Flexible Manufacturing Systems (AD-FMSs). The system includes memory data of past production conditions and AGV actions. Using these memory data, the system reorders hypotheses by giving the highest priority ranking to the hypothesis that is most likely to be true. The system was applied to an AD-FMS constructed on a computer. The results showed that this reasoning system reduced the number of hypothesis replacements.

Keywords: production systems; flexible manufacturing systems; production planning; autonomous FMS; decentralised FMS; AGVs; memory data; real-time control; manufacturing control; automatic guided vehicles; oblivion; reasoning.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIIDS.2007.016685

International Journal of Intelligent Information and Database Systems, 2007 Vol.1 No.3/4, pp.346 - 355

Published online: 14 Jan 2008 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article