Intelligent multi-agent architecture for a supervisor of a water treatment plant

Abstract

Abstract The rapid development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and high-capacity hardware components make it necessary to achieve a strong integration of automatic systems based on new paradigms on intelligent distributed architectures, where require highly complex supervision and control tasks, due to the generated requirements of the new production systems, the high number of variables to control and the advancement of technologies, especially in industries where continuous processes have been established. In the present work, a distributed hierarchical modular architecture is proposed for a supervision system, based on multi-agent systems (MAS), oriented to the management of processes in the filtration stage of a water purification plant, using a methodology to the implementation of intelligent agents that allow to project, design, verify and validate the system. This methodology is fundamentally based on the use of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) for its projection and Petri nets (PN) for the simulation and validation of properties, which allows to guarantee the modularity, flexibility, and robustness of the proposed system. The architectures of the intelligent agents in the different programmable devices are modeled and simulated to achieve an adequate interaction and collaboration, allowing to reduce the conflicts that may be generated between them. The evaluation of the distributed architecture focuses on the fulfillment of the functional requirements and evaluation metrics, which, through the analysis of the properties of the Petri net, allows to determine the correct operation of the system and its dynamic behavior in the face of unforeseen situations at different levels of automation.