Last week, we put the living lab through is paces through a shakedown test.
Four ultimakers were connected to a Local Area Network. Using our browser-based agent client on a laptop also on the network, they were able to broker a connection to the BAM network and start accepting jobs.
Over the course of three hours, jobs were submitted to the BAM network and the printers negotiated, bartered and bid for the work.
The shakedown test went really well we very few hiccups. The machines were able to bid for jobs and print as if in their own little world. The only limiting factor was us remembering to take the jobs off the printers and set the machines as “available” again to start accepting jobs!
We were able to print over 30 jobs suring the test. Jobs ranged from 5, 10 and 15 mins. Jobs were submitted every 4 minutes.
Below are some graphs showing the connections and messages being sent between the machine and job agents during the shakedown test.
Next Steps
We are currently reviewing the data to check everything worked as intended. The results will also inform us on what information we would like to log from the service so we are able to investigate the emergent behaviours of the printers.
We will also be using the data to correlate and calibrate our agent-based models so they better reflect real-world agent-based manufacturing systems.
The next test for the living lab will incorporate more printers (we have some Prusa printers at the ready) and more agent logics. With some further refinements to the interface, we will be looking to make the living lab live to our lab and student projects to submit their jobs to so we can see how such a system would support a real-world prototyping lab/workshop.
Great job everyone for pulling this all together.
Please feel free to contact if you would like to know more, see the living lab in action or even try it out with a few of your machines!
The code is also opensource and we will be documenting it up over the coming months so anyone can set up their own agent-based manufacturing system.