Real-time control software for flexible manufacturing system

FMS의 실제 시간 제어에 관한 연구

This paper gives the detail of the work carried out to develop real-time control software for Flexible Manufacturing Systems. A basic design philosophy to implement such software is proposed. The major features are the partitioning of complicated control actions into simplified ones, structured programming and multi-threaded transaction-based tasks. The software operates on the basis of passing task-to-task messages via mailboxes, causing appropriate actions to be taken by each task. Each task represents a separate subprocess so that the subprocesses can be run simultaneously. The task-to-task message could be easily replaced by computer-to-computer communication, using LAN, demonstrating that the software methods developed produce a flexible designs for control software of an FMS. A method of linking such software to simulation software is suggested as a potentially powerful additional design-tool.