A simulation-based controller for a flexible manufacturing cell

This paper discusses a new simulation tool which provides a computer-aided tool for designing the controllers that are required to manage a flexible manufacturing cell. The simulation tool explicitly models the controller interactions for a multilevel hierarchy of controllers. The simulation provides sufficient fidelity that the included controller models are actually capable of controlling their respective subsystems. To demonstrate this capability, the paper discusses our current efforts to construct a physical emulator for a flexible manufacturing system whose control architecture has been developed using the new simulation tool.