Application of Mobile Agents in Process Automation

U.Megalatha*, Dr.P.E.Sankaranarayanan**
* Department of Electronics and Control Engineering, Sathyabama University, Tamilnadu, India (e-mail:umegalatha@yahoo.co.in) **Dean, Sathyabama University, Tamilnadu, India (e-mail:drpesanky@hotmail.com)

Abstract: Agent based systems for intelligent manufacturing involves many application domains with specific characteristics. Our proposed agent based research work is in the field of process automation. In process automation the application of agent technology is being implemented in the SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) domain. It is felt that introducing Mobile Agent (MA) Technology into a SCADA system can improve the serviceability and enhance maintenance free operation. This paper aims to provide a feasible way to tackle the problems created during wired data transmission in the SCADA environment. Simulation of a single process has been carried out using Mobile agents, which are software components capable of migrating to, and perform on a remote host. This characteristic renders system flexibility and allows applications to be integrated into the same using low cost apparatus. The details of the simulation trials are discussed in the paper. Keywords: Agent based systems, SCADA, Process Automation, Mobile agents, Applications. operating conditions. One requirement that has been reported to have increasing importance is operational flexibility. This means that an automation system should manage more changes in production tasks and equipments without sacrificing other operational requirements. Other recently emphasized requirements include system availability and changeability. Abnormal situations need to be observed before they affect production objectives. This drawback introduces the concept of agents in process automation. An essential motivation for the application of agent technology has been the possibility to utilize the distribution co ordination methods of agents. As discussed above, process control and automation is an application area that has been conventionally characterised by requirements emphasizing productivity, safety, reliability, efficiency and quality. Process control and automation area has not however, fully adopted the new concepts in information technologies like mobile agents. Our aim in the proposed research is therefore to study how mobile agent technology could be used to fulfil at least some requirements of modern process control and automation systems. Agentbased systems technology is a rapidly expanding field of academic research having enormous application potential, but the full benefit is yet to be realized. With this in view, the match between the operational principles of process control and automation systems and those of mobile agents will now be briefly discussed along with the possible applications of mobile agent technology in the working of process control and automation systems. We will now discuss in brief how in the existing process laboratory environment, mobile agents can be used. We propose a system in which mobile agents are

1. INTRODUCTION Globalisation of Technology and its development has increasingly influenced Automation in process industries. Fully instrumented process control systems have contributed greatly to improve the productivity of virtually all process industries throughout the world. And, almost all the process monitoring systems installed as a part of plant or production process are basically Digital Control Instrumentation Systems as discussed in the site WWW.pacontrol.com. Automation had existed for many years in process industries, in the form of simple mechanical devices used to automate simple manufacturing tasks. With the addition of specialised hardwired computer, named as Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) automation became more practical to control almost any industrial process systems. PLCs are used to synchronise the flow of inputs from physical Sensors with the flow of outputs to actuators. Presently the purpose of automation has shifted from the goal of increasing the productivity and reducing costs, to broader issues, such as increasing safety, quality and flexibility in the manufacturing process. With the help of distributed control systems in combination with the self-tuning, self-diagnosing and optimizing features, it has now become possible to make both start up activity and operational routines of a complicated process much easier and more efficient. A large number of control systems operate in the real world and are expected to deal with the range of changing conditions of the physical process that is being controlled. It may be a laborious task to design one controller that fits all

implemented in real time to a level process which is a laboratory setup. 2. PROCESS AUTOMATION AND MOBILE AGENTS An agent is defined as a person whose job is to act for, or manage the affairs of other people. A software agent is an intelligent program that acts as a users personal assistant. Software agents with the property of mobility are called mobile agents. Mobile agents perform a users task by migrating and executing on several hosts connected to the network. Mobile agents can transport its state from one environment to another, with its data intact, and to adapt itself in the new environment. A mobile agent has the properties of intelligence, responsiveness, adaptability, communication ability etc., and autonomous. The advantages of using mobile agents over conventional agents are: reduces network load, overcomes network latency, protocol encapsulation, and fault tolerance, asynchronous and autonomous execution. Mobile agents have the ability to travel between different functional environments. Mobile agents can also be created dynamically at runtime and dispatched to source systems to perform tasks with the most updated code. Therefore mobile agents enable applications with significant flexibility and adaptability in dynamically changing environments.

The advantage of an agent augmented System is to complement an existing system with agent technology rather than replacing it. The agent system forms an additional agent layer on top of the system (Fig.1) as told by Ilkka Seilonen et al. The purpose of this layer is to supervise the system and reconfigure it when needed. The main objective is remotely or even locally, supervises and controls a system. The control and monitoring of the industrial process can be achieved with independence of its physical location, as which was the drawback of client server architecture. Lange et al has specified some main benefits, or good reasons, behind the use of mobile agents as, They reduce the network load. They overcome network latency. They encapsulate protocols They execute asynchronously and autonomously. They adapt dynamically. They are naturally heterogeneous. They are robust and fault-tolerant. E-commerce Personal assistance. Secure brokering. Distributed information retrieval. Telecommunication networks services. Workflow applications and groupware. Monitoring and notification. Information dissemination Parallel processing. Mobile agents applications are majorly classified as Parallel Computing, Data Collection, E-commerce, Mobile Computing 3. MOBILE AGENTS METHODOLOGY Mobile Agent is a software agent that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the pursuit of the goals of its clients. Artificial Intelligence is the imitation of human intelligence by mechanical means. Mobile agents have the ability to travel between different functional environments. Mobile agents can also be created dynamically at runtime and dispatched to source systems to perform tasks with the most updated code. Therefore mobile agents enable applications with significant flexibility and adaptability in dynamically changing environments.

Fig. 1. Process Automation with mobile agent

Fig 2. Mobile agent Vs Traditional communication

Traditional client server communication has a one to one relationship with each other, but in mobile agent based communication client and server communicates with each other by sending agents between them to communicate and do the required job (Fig 2). In this paper we discuss and deal only with single mobile agent. Parineeth explains that a mobile agent experiences certain events in its life cycle. They are, Creation: a new agent is created and its state is initialized. Dispatch: an agent travels to a new host. Cloning: a twin agent is created and the current state of the original is duplicated in the clone. Deactivation: an agent is put to sleep and its state is stored on a disk of the host. Activation: a deactivated agent is brought back to life and its state is restored from disk. Retraction: an agent is brought back from a remote host along with its state to the home machine. Disposal: an agent is terminated and its state is lost forever. 4. LEVEL CONTROL SYSTEM The Level process Control system which consists of supply water tank fitted with pump for water circulation. The level transmitter is fitted on transparent process tank senses level in the tank and transmits the signals to interfacing unit/control module. The output of interfacing unit/control module is connected to I/P converter. A pneumatic control valve adjusts the water flow in to the tank to control the level. The process parameter (Level) is controlled through computer controller by manipulating control valve (Fig 3).

Fig. 4. Computer Based Level Loop. 5. MOBILE AGENT APPLICATION The Level process Control system is taken as model for our work. The supervisory role of the Computer is achieved with the help of Agent logic. We link the level process data with the client - server based agent logic to supervise the process using computer. The working of Client Server based agent logic is given by flowchart (Fig.5).

Fig. 3. Level Loop. The process signals are transmitted to the local controller. The controller is in communication with central computer. The software in the computer performs the function of data acquisition, display and analysis. The controller settings can be changed from computer. The controller settings can be chosen are changed based upon the process model we choose and then tune the controller by designing using the tuning rules. The computer has a supervisory role as controlling is done by local controller (Fig 4).

Fig. 5. Flowchart representation - mobile agent application.

The client server based mobile agent was developed and the level loop process was automated. As explained in section 4, automation is done by a local computer. Mobile agent does the part of supervision with the help of a computer. The process loop is linked with the client, and the server controls or supervises (Fig.6).

server based mobile agent, agent is sent to the client from server to supervise the operation of the level loop and get level values at particular time (Fig.8),(Fig.9). The mobile agent retrieves the process value (level) from the client and sends the level value to the server.
Performance chart of a Level Process
60

50

Level - Process Variable

40

30

20

10

Fig. 6. Screenshot image of client server logic 6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The level loop process automated, gives a closed loop response (Fig.7), which is of the normal form. In the client -

Fig. 7. Performance Curve of the Level Process in Closed Loop.

Fig. 8. Screenshot of Mobile Agent Result

:4 1 3 6 :0 :4 8 6 3: :25 4 1 3 6 :4 :4 4 1 3 7 :0 :4 1 1 3 7 :1 :4 9 1 3 7 :3 :4 6 1 3 7 :5 :4 4 1 3 8 :1 :4 1 1 3 8 :2 :4 9 13 8:4 :4 8 1 3 9 :0 :4 4 1 3 9 :2 :4 1 1 3 9 :3 :4 9 1 3 9 :5 :5 8 1 3 0 :1 :5 4 1 3 0 :3 :5 1 1 3 0 :4 :5 9 1 3 1 :0 :5 6 1 3 1 :2 :5 4 1 3 1 :4 :5 1 1 3 1 :5 :5 9 1 3 2 :1 :5 6 1 3 2 :3 :5 4 1 3 2 :5 :5 1 1 3 3 :1 :5 1 1 3 3 :2 :5 9 1 3 3 :4 :5 6 1 3 4 :0 :5 4 13 4:2 :5 1 1 3 4 :3 :5 9 1 3 4 :5 :5 6 1 3 5 :1 :5 4 1 3 5 :3 :5 1 1 3 5 :4 :5 9 6: 06

13

System Time

Fig. 9. Screenshot of Mobile Agent Result. 7. CONCLUSIONS The mobile agent concept with single process automation has been shown. We use client server based agent logic to supervise the level process. REFERENCES Ilkka Seilonen, Pekka Appelqvist, Mika Vainio, Aarne Halme, Kari Koskinen, A Concept of an AgentAugmented Process Automation System. Lange and M. Oshima, Seven Good Reasons for Mobile Agents,Comm. of ACM, Vol.42, No.3, pp.8889, 1999. Marti.P, Aguado J.C, Rolando F, Veasco M, Colomar J, Fuertes J.M, A Java- based framework for distributed supervision and control of industrial processes. Milan Fajt,Information agents in Process Automation, Masters thesis, Helsinki university of technology, Automation technology Laboratory,June 2003. Parineeth M Reddy,Mobile agents, Journal article in Resonance, Vol7, No7, Page 35-43, July 2002. Pekka Appelqvist,Ilkka seilonen, Mika vainio, AarneHalme, Kari Koshinen, Heterogeneous Agents Cooperating:Robots,Field devices, and Process automation integrated with agent technology, in Journal Distribution Autonomous Robot System 5, Pg 350359, 2002 Teppo Pirttioja,Agent Augmented process automation system, Masters thesis, Helsinki University of U.Megalatha obtained a B.E. degree in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering from Annamalai University, Chidambaram in the year 2002, and an M.E. degree in Process Control and Instrumentation Engineering from Annamalai University, Chidambaram, in 2004. She is pursuing Phd in Sathyabama University, Chennai. Her areas of interest include wireless sensor networks and process control. technology, Automation technology Laboratory, Nov 2002. WWW.pacontrol.com.

Prof.Dr.P.E.Sankaranarayanan, Ph.D., PG.DPII (Holland)

The significant engineering achievements of Prof. Dr. P. E. Sankaranarayanan are in the field of Instrumentation - sensor based electronic system development for process control applications. His major contribution as a pioneer has been in the area of electronic instrumentation systems development pertaining to Aeronautics, Oceanography & Process Industries like - pulp & paper, leather and food processing Industries. He has many awards to his credit for his outstanding contributions. In recognition of his outstanding

and pioneering contributions in the field of Electronics and Telecommunication, the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers (India) was pleased to award the Tenth Ramlal Wadhwa Award a gold medal and a citation, to Dr. Sankaranarayanan. He has invented electronic musical instruments - the Thalam Generator and the Electronic Thambura, which are perhaps unique and made for the first time. He has more than 300 publications - in international/national journals, proceedings, reports etc., to his credit. He also holds 6 patents and guided more than 75 students for the M.Tech. M.E., and MSc. and 25 towards Ph.D./M.S. (By Research) degrees in the field of Electronics. As a visiting Scientist, Dr. Sankaranarayanan was with many R & D institutions, university departments and manufacturing organisations in USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Netherlands, West Germany and West Indies (Jamaica). He visited China (Beijing) for participating and chairing technical sessions in the IMEKO-XII World Congress on Measurement and Appendix A. LEVEL LOOP SPECIFICATIONS

Instrumentation. He visited New Zealand (Auckland) and participated in the Australasian Instrumentation and Measurement Conference (AIM-92) by presenting a technical paper and chairing a technical session. He also visited Sri Lanka and Iran as an UN resource person/consultant in the field of Technology Development and Transfer with emphasis on Regional Collaboration. He also acted as a consultant to the University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica during 2008. Dr. Sankaranarayanan is presently functioning as Dean Academic Research, at Sathyabama University, Chennai. He is the former Director Grade Scientist-in-Charge Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (Chennai Centre), CSIR Campus, Chennai & the former Co-ordinating Director, C.S.I.R. campus, Taramani, Chennai 600 113, India

Components used