A survey on applications of agent technology in industrial process control

The agents and multiagent systems technology is actively researched by the academia and industrial community. However, the technology is particularly popular in the manufacturing domain, while the applications in other domains of industrial control are scarce. This survey focuses exclusively on the technology applications in the automation of continuous industrial processes, as the differences in the technology adoption between the process automation and manufacturing are significant. A large part of the literature on the subject is reviewed. The analysis of the literature is provided from several points of view, the main trends of research are described, including the shift of the researchers' interest from the agent-based supervisory control to the low-level agent-based control algorithms. Conclusions are provided regarding the lack of the technology support on the part of control instrumentation vendors; probable directions of the development are indicated, which turn out to be especially promising in the domain of biotechnological processes.