FMS Control and Monitoring using Petri Net

A difficult problem in operating Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) is to control the system in real-time by coordinating heterogeneous machines and integrating distributed information. The objective of the paper is to present the models and methodologies useful to resolve the difficult problem. The detailed objectives can be described in three folds. First, a hierarchical Colored and Timed Petri-Net (CTPN) is designed to control an FMS in real-time. The concerned FMS consists of a loading station, several machining cells, a material handling system, and an unloading station. Timed-transitions are used to represent the timed-events such as AGV movements between stations and cells, part machining activities in the cells. Signal places are also used to represent communication status between the host and the cell controllers. To resolve the event conflicts and scheduling problems, dispatching rules are introduced and applied. Second, an implementation methodology used to monitor and diagnose the errors occurring on the machines during system operation is proposed. Third, a Petri-Net simulator is developed to experiment with the designed control logic.clos

Heterarchical SFCS??? ?????? ICPL ????????? ?????? ??????

This paper deals with the design and development of a real-time integrated communication architecture for heterarchical SFCS(Shop Floor Control System). In autonomous agent-based heterarchical SFCS, each functional unit of parts and resources is equipped with an intelligent controller (agent) that acts as the representative of the entity. The controllers communicate and negotiate with other controllers on a real-time basis through message passing and bidding protocol to achieve mutual agreements for task sharing. ICPL(Integrated Communication Protocol and Language) is proposed for this purpose. ICPL is a language and a protocol for supporting communication among intelligent controllers. Based on the speech act theory, this paper proposes a semantic description for ICPL that associates the description of the cognitive states of controllers with the use of language primitives (message_type). Semantics for the basic set of ICPL messages is described. Eventually, an ICPL-based communication architecture can provide the implementation of the distributed and heterarchical SFCS, and makes the intelligent controller transparent to the negotiation problem.clos