An approach for temporal myopia reduction in Heterarchical Control Architectures

This paper presents a model that aims at diminishing the impact of temporal myopia in Heterarchical Control Architectures (HeCA) of Flexible Manufacturing System (FMS). This model is based on a “switching architecture”, based upon the concept of intelligent reactive products. A virtual layer hosts Product Agents having the objective of preserving global performance, while a physical layer congregates physical products trying to follow the prescribed behavior, unless they sense a change of conditions. The idea is to empower autonomy while achieving an overall good global performance. For experimental purposes, this approach has been deployed at the AIP-PRIMECA center at University of Valenciennes, France and some results are presented.