Application of Decentralized and Self-Regulating Knowledge Bases for Assembly Design Automation

Abstract

During product development, changes to parts that are already built into assemblies usually lead to the need to check the function and consistency of the assembly. This procedure is very time-consuming and has to be performed again for each change. In this paper, an approach is presented in which the individual parts are represented as agents that adapt themselves to new conditions. The agents are combined in a multi-agent system (MAS) and interact via communication over messages. For this purpose, a methodical procedure for the development of the MAS and the implementation in a CAD development environment is presented. The validation of the MAS is carried out on the application example of a gearbox.