Multi-agent Systems for Engineering Design of Fixtures

This chapter introduces an agent-based framework for engineering design of fixture systems. A number of researchers have applied the agent technology to engineering design and several agent-based systems have been developed accordingly addressing different application domains in design. Development of multi-agent system for fixture design is motivated by the need for a computational infrastructure that supports integration of disparate Computer-aided Fixture Design (CAFD) systems in distributed environments. In this chapter, multi-agent approach to fixture design is studied from two perspectives: 1) Agent Architecture and 2) System Architecture. At an agent-level, a problem solving methodology for fixture design based on evolutionary algorithms is discussed. At a system-level, a generic framework for agent interaction and communication for problem definition, fixture synthesis, and fixture analysis is proposed in this chapter. The authors hope this chapter can help researchers gain a better understanding of the major challenges, research issues and future directions in the domain of agent-based fixture design.