Distributed, multi-agent control has been proposed to improve the flexibility of manufacturing systems. Two important components of this control strategy are product agents, representing physical parts in the system, and resource agents, representing the system resources. Product agents request actions from resources agents to guide physical parts through the manufacturing system. Before requesting specific actions, a product agent must effectively communicate with the system's resource agents to understand the capabilities of the resources on the plant floor. In this work, an approach to product agent exploration based on a network of resource agents is described and analyzed. In addition, results and insights from an implementation of the proposed exploration methodology in a manufacturing system are presented.     «

Distributed, multi-agent control has been proposed to improve the flexibility of manufacturing systems. Two important components of this control strategy are product agents, representing physical parts in the system, and resource agents, representing the system resources. Product agents request actions from resources agents to guide physical parts through the manufacturing system. Before requesting specific actions, a product agent must effectively communicate with the system's resource agents...     »