Electromechanical systems manage physical processes through a network of inter-connected components. Today, programming the interactions required for coordinating these components is largely a manual process. This process is time-consuming and requires manual adaptation when system features change. To overcome this issue, we use autonomous software agents that process semantic descriptions of the system to determine coordination requirements and constraints; on this basis, they then interact with one another to control the system in a decentralized and coordinated manner.Our core insight is that coordination requirements between individual components are, ultimately, largely due to underlying physical interdependencies between the components, which can be (and, in many cases, already are) semantically modeled in automation projects. Agents then use hypermedia to discover, at run time, the plans and protocols required for enacting the coordination. A key novelty of our approach is the use of hypermedia-driven interaction: it reduces coupling in the system and enables its run-time adaptation as features change.

翻译：机电系统通过相互连接的组件网络管理物理过程。目前，对这些组件进行协调所需的交互编程主要依赖人工完成。这一过程耗时费力，且当系统特性发生变化时需要人工调整。为解决此问题，我们采用自主软件代理处理系统的语义描述，以确定协调需求与约束；在此基础上，代理通过相互交互以去中心化的协调方式控制系统。我们的核心观点是：单个组件间的协调需求本质上主要源于组件间潜在的物理相互依赖性，这种依赖性可在自动化项目中进行语义建模（在许多案例中已实现建模）。代理随后利用超媒体在运行时发现执行协调所需的计划与协议。本方法的关键创新在于采用超媒体驱动的交互机制：该机制降低了系统耦合度，并能在系统特性变化时实现运行时自适应。