Controlled run-time adaptivity in industrial agent systems : challenges and research prospects

Abstract

Developing Cyber-physical Systems (CPS) inherently requires enabling run-time adaptivity. These systems integrate physical components, which operate in changeable contexts. In addition, objectives may change, due to socio-technical aspects. Industrial agents have been proposed for enhancing future industrial automation and control systems and integrating agents in industrial systems is an active field of research. Besides enabling technical compatibility of agent concepts and frameworks, the design and orchestration of agent activities have to be fine-tuned and a goal-directed adaption@run.time requires that the system can analyze its own structure at run-time; therefore, the system’s structure has to be reflected inside the system. Here, we outline current work and research challenges on how explicit organizational modeling can facilitate developing industrial agent systems. We discuss architectural aspects and outline how adaptations of organizations can be enabled, modeled and automated following the MAPE-K approach.