Modelling and control of manufacturing systems subject to context recognition and switching

ABSTRACT

Finite-State Automata (FSA) are foundations for modelling, synthesis, verification, and implementation of controllers for manufacturing systems. However, FSA are limited to represent emerging features in manufacturing, such as the ability to recognise and switch contexts. One option is to enrich FSA with parameters that carry details about the manufacturing, which may favour design and control. A parameter can be embedded either on transitions or states of an FSA, and each approach defines its own modelling framework, so that their comparison and integration are not straightforward, and they may lead to different control solutions, modelled, processed and implemented distinctly. In this paper, we show how to combine advantages from parameters in manufacturing the modelling and control. We initially present a background that allows to understand each parameterisation strategy. Then, we introduce a conversion method that translates a design-friendly model into a synthesis-efficient structure. Finally, we use the converted models is synthesis, highlighting their advantages. Examples are used throughout the paper to illustrate and compare our results and tooling support is also provided.

Keywords:

• Manufacturing systems
• supervisory control
• modelling integration
• context handling
• finite-state automaton

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

Notes

1 The SpFSA literature usually refers to states as locations, composed by a state and associated parameters, which is here generalised indistinctly.

2 The equivalence between $K^{}$ and $\mathrm{\Pi }\left({K_{\mathfrak{D}}}^{}\right)$ (and similarly $K^{}$ and ${K_{\mathfrak{E}}}^{}$) follows, in general, but it depends on modelling tasks, which we assume here to be well defined from the engineering point of view.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Luiz Fernando Puttow Southier

Luiz Fernando Puttow Southier is a Ph.D. student in Applied Informatics at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUCPR). He is a scholarship holder from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). He holds a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Technology - Parana (UTFPR), having developed research in Modeling and Control of Discrete Event Systems. As a graduate in Computer Engineering, from UTFPR with a period at Pennsylvania State University, he carried out a research internship at the Department of Computer Science at the New York University, USA. In addition, he performed Scientific Initiation researching and developing Web solutions for Linear Programming and Linear Algebra, Economic Engineering and Public Management. His research interests are in the field of Process Mining, Discrete Event Systems, Economic Process Analysis and Economic Engineering, among others.

Dalcimar Casanova

Dalcimar Casanova holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the Universidade do Oeste de Santa Catarina UNOESC (2005), a master's degree in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics from the Institute of Mathematical and Computer Sciences ICMC-USP (2008), a Ph.D. candidate in Computational Physics from the Institute of Physics of São Carlos IFSC-USP (2013) and post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Physics of São Carlos IFSC-USP (2015). He is currently a professor at the Federal Technological University of Paraná UTFPR and permanent professor at PPGEE. He has experience in Computer Science, Computational Physics, and applications in multidisciplinary areas, working mainly on the following topics: computer vision, complex networks, fractals, machine learning and bioinformatics.

Luis Barbosa

Luís Soares Barbosa is a full professor at the Computer Science Department, Universidade do Minho, and a senior researcher at the High Assurance Software laboratory, HASLab INESC TEC. Recently he has joined INL, the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory, to lead the new Quantum Software Engineering Group. His main research focuses on programme semantics, logics and calculi applied to rigorous software analysis, design, and construction. Most of his work is framed on Coalgebra and Modal Logic.

Cesar Torrico

César Rafael Claure Torrico holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the Universidad Mayor de San Simón (1995), a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (1999) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (2003). He is currently a professor at the Federal Technological University of Paraná-UTFPR. He has experience in the field of Industrial Automation and Control, working mainly on the following topics: microcontrollers, discrete event systems, supervisory control, and vector control of induction motors.

Marco Barbosa

Marco Barbosa graduated in Informatics at Universidade de Cruz Alta (1998). He has a master's degree in Computer Science from Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (2001) and Ph.D. at Informatics from University of Minho (2009). He has experience in Computer Science, focussing on Analysis of Algorithms and Computational Complexity, acting on the following subjects: algorithm complexity, automatic algorithm analysis, teaching support, informatics in education and coinduction.

Marcelo Teixeira

Marcelo Teixeira is a Computer Scientist with master's in Computer Engineering and Ph.D. in Automation & Systems Engineering. His research interests cover some topics in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Automation Sciences, with special focus on Discrete-Event Systems, Cyber-Physical Systems, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Industry 4.0, Synthesis of controllers for industrial processes, industrial automation, and automatic synthesis of software. He's been an active member of the IEEE since 2016, participating of the Industrial Electronic Society (IES), Technical Committee on Factory Automation, Subcommittee Industrial Automated Systems and Control. In 2020, he received a Research Productivity Grant from CNPq.