FIPA compliant fleet management system to improve interoperability

Abstract

With recent advancements in the capabilities of mobile robots it is vital that systems managing them keep up. Fleet management systems have faced issues with interoperability issues recently trying to integrate robots from different manufacturers into systems. This thesis presents a fleet management system creating using FIPA-standards for agent communication. This system was created by conducting a literary review into FIPA-standards and state of the art systems. This implementations interoperability and scalability were greatly improved by following unified standards. This systems interoperability relies on other developers and researchers also following the same standard. System created also had its drawbacks stemming from following FIPA-standards. It was concluded that using a single unifying standard for multi agent system structure greatly enhances interoperability and scalability of systems. Creation of new modern standard for multi-agent systems would benefit scalability of new systems. Based on these results different manufacturers using unified standards would also greatly benefit the ease of integrating them into systems at factory floor. ROS 2 offers great simulation capabilities for testing multi-agent applications but has a high learning curve. More research should be conducted into creating a unified agent standard for constantly developing mobile robots.