Net-based cooperative control for autonomous distributed systems

This paper discusses an autonomous distributed control system to overcome the deficiencies in robustness against failures, flexibility, and set-up speed of conventional centralized control systems. In order to realize the autonomous distributed control for intelligent manufacturing systems, we propose a model and a method to realize this model. The model consists of numerous autonomous agents and a field where these agents can exchange information for cooperation. Also, we discuss the importance of the protocol needed for cooperation of the individual agents. The autonomous distributed control system model was used in the study of an automated guided vehicle (AGV) system. Here, numerical simulations using Petri net model were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of our model. >