Industrial Multi-agent Systems Integration: an Approach Based on Information Exchange among Standards

This work proposes an approach to facilitate the integration in the communications among industrial systems and shop floor devices by means of a global and integrated environment. This environment is open, makes use of a number of standards, providing a transparent way to integrate the standards CORBA, KQML, MMS and XML in all the required levels. This proposal focuses on how the communication of Industrial Multi-agent Systems can be harmonized and encapsulated, comprising all the necessary actors and, at the same time, maintaining the essential properties of each protocol within the borders for which they have been developed/proposed. It means to provide a leaner interface to any external application that needs to have access to shop floor data, without requiring the knowledge of the syntax details of both protocols used and the particularities of each machine's controller that it is necessary to communicate with.