Synthesis of multi-agents as modular supervisors in a manufacturing application

This paper shows a methodology to synthesize a discrete multiagent system for a manufacturing transfer line, where blocking (deadlock) is the main issue to deal with. The elements of a transfer line are modeled as discrete event systems (DES) and represented as Finite State Automata (FSA). The synthesis of two supervisors or agents is based on Ramadge-Wonham Modular Supervisory approach as a high level of abstraction tool for discrete event systems. An unblocking mechanism (UDM), which includes a user interaction, is designed to unblock the transfer line. Preliminary results are shown as graphs to illustrate and explain intuitively how blocking is handled.