Software Agent-based Multi-Robot Development: A Case Study

摘要

The Internet of things (IoT) systems and cyber- physical systems (CPS) have lured various embedded technology from low-end to high-level devices, including sensors nodes, development boards, and model-based solutions to increase the development and prototyping of the target systems. Moreover, these systems' heterogeneity problem and complexity require intelligent solutions where the multi-agent systems can be a solution. LEGO technology is a preferable methodology to emulate the complexity and heterogeneity problem of cyber-physical systems, which benefit from the IoT paradigm to establish network, communication and messaging. However, a methodology to integrate the software agents to control these LEGO-based complex and heterogeneous systems should be defined. Once embedded sensing, actuation, networking and control are merged with the agent- based programming, then this infrastructure can pave the way for applying intelligent and model-based solutions to tackle the high- level problems of CPS. In this paper, a case study is introduced to describe the LEGO technology-based cyber-physical systems and software agents' integration. During the development of the convoy robot case study, a line follower robot followed by an adaptive cruise control robot is implemented. The case study design (both the system and software) is realized using SysML, and the implementation is done using Lego Bricks, RaspberryPi, and JADE agent programming language.