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A Generic Architecture for Multiple Agent Process Control
This cooperative research effort combined expertise
in artificial
intelligence and constraint-based
reasoning from the Department of Computer Science at NCSU
with expertise in Process Control
from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Duke.
The inter-disciplinary efforts of the researchers
were focused through the construction of
an in-depth control application of a
large-scale hydraulic distribution system.
Project activities consisted of three
parts.
The first was to study the nature of the knowledge
necessary for multiple agent process control,
including issues deriving from uncertainty
in dynamic systems and issues concerned with achieving task coordination
between multiple agents including humans in the control loop.
The second was to investigate
the utility of fuzzy constraint networks
for representing and reasoning with the types of knowledge identified
in the first part.
The third was to integrate
the results
from the first two parts by applying the knowledge gained to
develop a prototype fuzzy
constraint network-based process controller for a multi-agent application
area.