Integration of reconfiguration in transitic systems: an agent-based approach

The aim of this paper is to present an agent-based approach for the reconfiguration of transitic systems. These systems have to be reconfigured when unexpected events occurs (failures, integration of new resources, etc.). The reconfiguration procedure consists in new searching paths in the system enabling the different products to reach the appropriate resources in order to perform required production operations. The proposed reconfiguration procedure uses an extension of the ant colonies algorithms applied to the operational accessibility graph concept. The different entities of the system (resources, products, etc.) are implemented by means of the multi-agents paradigm. The approach is tested on an industrial conveyor with rollers.