Design of robotic work cells using object-oriented and agent-based approaches

摘要

Purpose: of this paper is to present agent-based and object-oriented approaches in the desingning of robotic work cells. The complexity of elements which form the robotic work cells causes that already at the design stage it is necessary to evolve the models that comply with different aspects of the conformation and principles of the operation of the workcell.Design/methodology/approach: The use of agent-based and object-oriented approaches during the process of robotized workcell's design, allows i.a. to systematize the knowledge about the designed workcell and simplifies the definition and analysis of relationship between its components. Most modern systems CAD/CAM uses object-oriented structure. They do not allow the creation of a direct structure agents. It is therefore necessary to show the relationship between the object and the agent.Findings: The relationship between object-oriented and agent-based model allow to fill the gap between them. Understanding of them could allow more efficient use of existing systems that are decicated for designing of robotic work cells.Research limitations/implications: The presented considerations are only the introduction to the further work on developing these methods for the use during the design process of robotic cell, and clearly do not cover all the issues involved, hence there are also other open issues for future research that could generalize the researches or could be a starting point for a new ones. These problems may concern e.g.: development of appropriate methods of communication and cooperation between the agents or the definition of the new agents that can act autonomously according to their own algorithms.Practical implications: The main objective is to build the base for modular and flexible system that will allow designing of robotic work cells using the methods presented in the paper. Due to high cost of such systems, there is no reason to make it from scratch. The better way is to integrate the existing applications and use the synergetic effect of such approach.