Phase Agents and Dynamic Routing for Batch Process Automation

Currently applied process automation solutions rely on prede ned control recipes with preprogrammed material transfer routes in the subjacent control software. Thus, the exibility is limited with regard to dynamic environment conditions such as a change of production job priorities or a modi cation of the system layout. In this context, agent technology is seen as a promising approach for providing such exibility. 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 nding algorithm is introduced for dynamically calculating suitable routes. Moreover, demonstration applications are presented to show the feasibility of the approach.