Cooperative control of networked discrete‐event systems: Application to the handling system HANS

Abstract

A method for the cooperative control of networked discrete-event systems is evaluated experimentally on a handling system. Networked discrete-event systems consist of controlled subsystems, which have to solve local and cooperative tasks. Local tasks are specified by target states of each individual subsystem, whereas cooperative tasks are modelled by synchronous state transitions for neighbouring subsystems. Network units connect the controlled subsystems via a digital network and apply situation dependent communication, if a cooperation is necessary. The experiments show that the proposed method is suitable to provide a flexibly structured handling system and that it is feasible with regard to the computational complexity.