Open-architecture system based on a reconfigurable hardware–software multi-agent platform for CNC machines

New generation of manufacturing systems endows their intelligence and reconfigurability to the computerized numerical controller (CNC) machines. This paper presents an open-architecture platform based on multi-agent hardware–software units, by developing a novel Multi-Agent Distributed CONtroller (MADCON) system. This system intends to fulfill the requirements of reconfigurability for the next generation of intelligent machines. The design of intelligent drives for this system follows a hardware–software co-design approach using a simple and intuitive structure. The hardware units of the proposed system integrate control and monitoring functions providing an FPGA-based open architecture for reconfigurable applications. On the other hand, software components were developed utilizing the XML structure for system description files, gathering features like a flowchart descriptive language and a graphic user-interface. MADCON was applied to a retrofitted to CNC lathe for control and monitoring in order to validate the proposed architecture towards the development of new generation intelligent manufacturing systems.