Implementation of agent-based reconfigurable embedded control systems

The paper deals with the implementation of reconfigurable embedded control systems following the Component-based International Industrial Standard IEC61499, in which a Function Block is an event triggered software component owning data and an application is a composition of blocks. To handle automatic reconfigurations of the whole system, we define an agent-based architecture such that the agent checks and interprets the environment evolution before creates, updates or deletes Function Blocks according to well-defined conditions. It is composed of three modules: the interpreter that interprets the environment evolution, the engine that decides new reconfigurations according to such evolution and the converter that applies agent decisions. A Benchmark Production System is used to explain our contribution, and technical solutions are proposed to implement its different agent modules.