Realizing holonic control with function blocks

Abstract

Future manufacturing systems will be required to be agile, flexible and fault-tolerant. Development of these next-generation systems will not only require new approaches, but also new ways of thinking about these systems. This paper describes a real-time control architecture for distributed intelligent control that combines the emerging IEC-1499 standard for distributed control with the holonic control paradigm. The focus of the paper is on a generic control system designer for the lower process/machine control layer of this real-time control architecture. This paper outlines related research into control system architecture using multi-agent negotiation and cooperation, then describes the intelligent control function design interface and automatic control code generation.