Combined strength of holons, agents and function blocks in cyber-physical systems

This paper presents a novel approach to implementing cyber-physical systems (CPS) using the combined strength of holons, agents and function blocks. Within the context, a CPS is represented by a holarchy of multiple holons. Each holon possesses a logical part and a physical part, which mimic the cyber and physical entities of the CPS. During implementation, the two parts of a holon are realised by agents and function blocks for information processing and materials processing, respectively. The objective of this research is to provide a concept map and associate a CPS with holons, agents and function blocks for the ease of system implementation in decentralised or cloud environment. (C) 2016 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.