Towards ontology-based information extraction in distributed manufacturing systems

Abstract

In this paper, the role of ontology in constructing a Pay-per-Use (PpU) distributed manufacturing platform is discussed. First, the ontology for each agent in the web-based platform is built, and the relationships between the ontology and the agents in the PpU platform are identified. Second, the ontology for the PpU platform is modeled as a combination of the ontology of all the agents in the PpU platform. Agents are categorized as hybrid agents, which means an integration of agents, or category agents, which means different types of agents. Since the ontology-based architecture allows heterogeneity and polymorphism of the information among different agents, it is suitable for multi-agent platforms and heterogeneous knowledge-based systems. Message translation involves translating multiple interpretations of the same information among diverse agents. Due to the dynamicity of the individual agent ontology and the system ontology construction, ontology matching algorithms are employed to facilitate information communication among the agents. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group.