Interactive modeling and simulation of virtual manufacturing assemblies: An agent-based approach

In this paper, an agent-based design and development of an interactive virtual environment for a manufacturing assembly process is described. Agents in the assembly are identified through their respective responsibilities and are implemented so that they coordinate between one another to accomplish the PC assembly / disassembly process. The robot agent, crucial to the assembly operation, is designed to handle multiple failure situations, wherein it coordinates with the part agent to accommodate the failure. * The research is part of the Virtual environments in Education, Robotics, Automation and Manufacturing (VERAM) project. Much of the work reported here was performed at the Software and Data Engineering (SODA) Laboratory at Georgia Southwestern State University and is being continued at the Computer-Aided Re-Engineering (CARE) Laboratory at Tennessee Tech. VERAM has been supported, in part, by grants from the Georgia Board of Regents, National Science Foundation (#DMI 9896235) and the Center for Manufacturing Research at TN Tech. Special Issue on “Computer Integrated Manufacturing Systems: Recent Developments and Applications” Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, December 1998