Holonic assembly system with Plug and Produce

An assembly system based on holonic concept has been newly installed. The system consists of three manipulators, one beltconveyor and two warehouses. The system assembles several parts into a product. Its sequences are planned by negotiation among the assembly devices by means of contract net protocol. Thus, even though the parts are supplied at different warehouses, the system can generate a sequence of transportation automatically. Utilizing the characteristics of distributed autonomous systems, a new concept Plug and Produce is proposed. A device can be installed easily and then immediately start to work. This system has high robustness against the reconfiguration and sudden changes of products. Experiments were made for two kinds of assembly tasks and verified the efficiency of the system.