MAS-based Distributed Cyber-physical System in Smart Warehouse

This paper presents an approach for a multi-agent-based cyber-physical system dedicated to operating the warehouse plant with a distributed approach. The recent technological evolution has improved the quality and robustness of the services for current warehouses. However, systems that operate warehouses do not follow this evolution, presenting predominantly central monolithic or hierarchical approaches, resulting in fragility related to flexibility, scalability, and robustness in the face of disturbances. In the proposed approach, each warehouse physical component has a computational unit associated, i.e. a cyber agent, with communication, negotiation, and data analysis capabilities. Agents contain all the information, algorithms, and functions necessary to operate the physical component, and instead of receiving orders from higher-layer agents, they negotiate and collaborate to perform the tasks. The proposed system was tested in a laboratory testbed, composed of six racks and up to eight robots for transporting products. Extensive experiments show the feasibility of the approach. Copyright (c) 2023 The Authors.