2006 IEEE International Conference on Networking, Sensing and Control

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, April 23-25, 2006

http://web.umr.edu/~icnsc06/ or http://ieeeicnsc.org



PLENARY LECTURE
Agent-Based Control for Networked Systems: A Paradigm Shift in a Connected World

Fei-Yue Wang
Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA

As we enter the age of a connected world with "computing everywhere, connecting everything", we are facing a revolution that will dramatically change our technological and social infrastructures and activities, and eventually, our lifestyle. Clearly, a world of interconnected pervasive devices is emerging and will lead to a connected way of life with ever smaller and ever smarter appliances embedded in various intelligent environments. Creating the enabling infrastructures and technologies that make possible the realization of such a connected world and lifestyle is a great and exciting challenge in the new century.

Effective control and management of networked systems is the most important issue for the successful operation of this connected world. We outline an agent-based control approach that would enable interconnected devices behave intelligently in a cost effective fashion. The basic idea is to transform traditional control algorithms into task-oriented autonomous control agents moving in networked environments with a new hosting mechanism that permits agents to operate under the principle of ¡°local simple, remote complex¡±. Issues related to modeling and analysis of agent-based control processes, design of networked-based intelligent control algorithms, as well as the corresponding software platforms and middleware are addressed here. Finally, case studies of agent-based control in real-world industrial applications are presented.