A Methodology for Integrating Asset Administration Shells and Multi-agent Systems

Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is promoting the digitization of industrial environments towards intelligent and distributed industrial automation systems based on Cyber-physical Systems (CPS). Currently, this digitization process is being leveraged by the Asset Administration Shell (AAS), which digitally describes an asset in a standardized and semantically unambiguous form throughout its lifecycle. However, more robust solutions based on autonomous AASs endowed with collaborative and intelligent capabilities, also called proactive AASs, are still in the early stages. In this context, Multi-agent Systems (MAS) are a key enabler to provide the required autonomy, intelligence and collaborative capabilities for the AASs. With this in mind, this paper presents a methodology positioned with respect to the Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0 (RAMI4.0) layers, which provides guidelines for integrating AASs and MAS, aiming to support the development of proactive AASs. The applicability of the proposed methodology was tested through the integration of AASs and MAS for a smallscale CPS demonstrator.