Negotiation and conflict resolution in a multi-agent system for an assembly robotics cell

A multi-agent system architecture is here both described and justified for the sake of its application to an assembly robotics testbed. A blackboard-based agent using a GBB/DBB facility for intra (and not inter) agent communication and including knowledge about all the agents community, is presented as well as its main functionality. These agents are well suited for pursuing their own goals through their local activity control as well as the system overall goals by means of appropriate cooperative behavior. Coordination of different agents dynamically playing the roles either of organizers or respondents may lead to the use of both negotiation and client/server protocols for cooperation. Agents coordination activity regarding conflict resolution is also presented and illustrated through a documented example in the robotics testbed. A real testbed, whose agents are here briefly presented, working with real-time constraints has been already implemented and tested at our laboratory