Monitoring and diagnosing railway signalling with logic-based distributed agents

This paper describes an ongoing project that involves DISI, the Computer Science Department of Genova University, and Ansaldo Segnalamento Ferroviario, the Italian leader in design and construction of signalling and automation systems for railway lines. We are implementing a multiagent system that monitors processes running in a railway signalling plant, detects functioning anomalies, provides diagnoses for explaining them, and early notifies problems to the Command and Control System Assistance. Due to the intrinsic rule-based nature of monitoring and diagnostic agents, we have adopted a logic-based language for implementing them.