Autonomous Agents for Distributed Problem Solving, Planning and Control

Intelligent Automation, Incorporated is developing a new innovative approach to concurrent product-process development. The resulting system will also allow integrated development of production planning and scheduling, including external supplier integration. Our approach is based on the paradigm of autonomous agents. The work herein proposed focuses on improvements and extensions to the "Intelligent Agent Infrastructure (IAI)" already partly developed by Intelligent Automation, Incorporated (IAI), and on development of standards to allow consistent creation, operation, and evaluation of these systems. Specific innovations proposed for the infrastructure include a "subscription book", to extend the concept of inheritance from objects to agents, and market driven computation resource allocation integrated with the other communication and interaction between agents.