A multi-agent and internet of things framework of digital twin for optimized manufacturing control

ABSTRACT

The demand for customized products is increasing, which brings great challenges to the traditional manufacturing system. The traditional manufacturing system lacks the analysis and feedback of the data collected in manufacturing, which hinders the rational utilization of the resources. In order to reasonably allocate resources according to the production requirements and effectively avoid the influence of external interference on the manufacturing system, a framework for the intelligent digital twin shopfloor is proposed in this paper. The framework consists of three primary components, namely physical shopfloor, virtual shopfloor, and digital twin service system. A model of digital twin shopfloor, a self-organizing model which achieves automation function in physical shopfloor, and an adaptive model which provides additional external disturbance resistance in virtual shopfloor are developed to improve the above-mentioned components. The mechanism of a contract network protocol and some cooperation strategies used in multi-agents are applied to achieve the capabilities above, which improve the reconfiguration and response ability of the shopfloor. A design case is studied to illustrate that the intelligent digital twin shopfloor can configure resources and deal with disturbances effectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Multi-agent system (MAS)
• digital twin (DT)
• intelligent shopfloor
• self-adaptation
• self-organization
• intelligent manufacturing system(IMS)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant numbers 2020YFB1710500, 2018YFE0177000]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 52075257]; and the Central Universities [grant number NP2020304];Under Equipment Project of Ship Assembly and Construction for The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology[No. TC190H47J];Key Research and Development Program of Jiangsu Province[No. BE2021091];