Knowledge-based Multi-agent Architecture

This paper presents a knowledge-intensive multi-agent architecture that enables ontology-based communication and cooperation among a set of autonomous and heterogeneous agents. An agent, the main core of our architecture, acts based on his knowledge, by sensing the manufacturing environment, triggering the reasoning process, which selects the proper actions to be executed and that will affect the manufacturing environment. The ontology is shared among agents and serves as the instrument to define the vocabulary used by the agents during their interactions, and to support "understanding" of the message content in the sense of its correct interpretation.