Title : Self-adaptive Regulation Mechanisms for a Trustworthy and Sustainable Industry of the Future
Début de thèse : 2023
Fin de thèse : 2026
Abstract: In modern manufacturing systems, there is a significant potential to adopt connected, adaptive systems to enhance efficiency and promote sustainability. A resilient and adaptive manufacturing ecosystem is essential to cope with increasing levels of sophistication and industrial and environmental requirements. In the view of the Industry of the Future, this demands the adoption of more flexible, adaptable, resilient, and sustainable technologies. Generally speaking, socio-technical systems are used to implement the Industry of the Future which integrates social and technical aspects. This involves deploying adaptive technologies that can quickly and flexibly respond to both endogenous dynamics and exogenous changes.
Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are promising foundations in socio-technical systems to control manufacturing with their support for decentralization and flexibility. Agents are autonomous entities that make independent decisions and act to achieve their goals. However, their autonomy renders the control of manufacturing systems a challenge; therefore, the regulation of these systems becomes imperative.
In Normative MAS (NMAS), concepts such as norms and sanctions are used to regulate and enforce the behavior of autonomous agents according to the stated desired order. Norm represents the expected behavior of agents and is used to steer the system to the overall objectives. Sanctions are consequences of compliance or violation of the norm and can nudge agents to act conforming to the norms. Integrating these concepts in MAS allows a balance between the agent’s autonomy and system’s regulation.
In this context, the objective of the thesis is to design and develop models and mechanisms for socio-technical MAS able to self-adapt for regulating manufacturing systems for a trustworthy and sustainable Industry of the Future. The thesis focuses on proposing elements (e.g., models, mechanisms, languages) for general socio-technical MAS to achieve flexibility and adaptability in the regulated system. The applicability will be targeted on the manufacturing systems for a trustworthy and sustainable Industry of the Future perspective.
Keywords: Multiagent Systems, Normative Systems, Responsible AI, Industry of the Future
Date de soutenance prévue : —
Encadrement :
- Directeur de thèse : Olivier BOISSIER, Mines Saint-Étienne
- Co-Directeur de thèse : Jaime Simão SICHMAN, University of São Paulo – Brazil
- Co-encadrant : Luis Gustavo NARDIN, Mines Saint-Étienne
Partenaires ou/et Financeurs :
ANR-FAPESP NAIMAN Project
Objectifs de développement durable concernés :
Publications
- In Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), the regulation of agents aims to define a balance between the control of the system and the agents' autonomy. The ability of a MAS to adapt its regulations at run-time is an important feature that enables it to be flexible to changing situations. There is no unique approach to designing such […]
- Regulating multi-agent system (MAS) to achieve a balance between the autonomy of agents and the control of the system is still a challenge. Regulation management in MAS has been conceptualized from various perspectives in the literature, whose intersections open up a wide range of design options. We propose a unified view on regulation management in […]
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- In increasingly autonomous and highly distributed multi-agent systems, centralized coordination becomes impractical and raises the need for governance and enforcement mechanisms from an agent-centric perspective. In our conceptual view, sanctioning norm enforcement is part of this agent-centric perspective and they aim at promoting norm compliance while preserving agents’ autonomy. The few works dealing with sanctioning […]
- Abstract As the complexity of software systems rises, explainability – i.e. the ability of systems to provide explanations of their behaviour – becomes a crucial property. This is true for any AI-based systems, including autonomous systems that exhibit decisionmaking capabilities such as multi-agent systems. Although explainabil- ity is generally considered useful to increase the level […]
- In increasingly autonomous and highly distributed multi-agent systems, centralized coordination becomes impractical and raises the need for governance and enforcement mechanisms from an agent-centric perspective. In our conceptual view, sanctioning norm enforcement is part of this agent-centric approach and they aim at promoting norm compliance while preserving agents' autonomy. The few works dealing with sanctioning […]
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