Online reconfiguration of the low level control for automation agents

Addressing changing market conditions and customer needs requires more flexible and reconfigurable manufacturing systems. Distributed intelligent control systems based on agent technologies are seen as a promising approach to provide reconfiguration abilities. Existing work has been focused on the reconfiguration of higher layers concerned with production planning and scheduling. However, a different approach is needed for reconfiguration of the control software at a lower level closer to physical components, in order to enable a better adaptation to changes and disturbances in the local environment. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of online reconfiguration of the low level control for automation agents. Our approach relies on a reconfiguration infrastructure for real-time control software based on the IEC 61499 standard. We detail the features of this infrastructure as well as its integration within the architecture of an automation agent. We also describe an implementation example with timing measurements showing the ability for rapid reconfiguration. Using our approach, reconfiguration can be performed locally without the need to restart the control system.