Automatic generation of control system software for flexible manufacturing systems

Presents a systematic approach to automate the development of control software for flexible manufacturing cells at the cell, workstation and equipment controller level. A functional architecture and context-free grammars are proposed as the formal basis, and the FMS system is controlled as a by-product of recognizing context-free grammars. Sematic actions associated with the productions in the grammars provide the required control actions. The underlying system architecture, along with the physical, system and functional models are presented for the various components of the FMS. Implementation issues of the proposed approach are also discussed.