Automatic Generation Of Control Code Research Articles

Supervisory control theory applied to swarm robotics

Currently, the control software of swarm robotics systems is created by ad hoc development. This makes it hard to deploy these systems in real-world scenarios. In particular, it is difficult to maintain, analyse, or verify the systems. Formal methods can contribute to overcome these problems. However, they usually do not guarantee that the implementation matches the specification, because the system’s control code is typically generated manually. Also, there is cultural resistance to apply formal methods; they may be perceived as an additional step that does not add value to the final product. To address these problems, we propose supervisory control theory for the domain of swarm robotics. The advantages of supervisory control theory, and its associated tools, are a reduction in the amount of ad hoc development, the automatic generation of control code from modelled specifications, proofs of properties over generated control code, and the reusability of formally designed controllers between different robotic platforms. These advantages are demonstrated in four case studies using the e-puck and Kilobot robot platforms. Experiments with up to 600 physical robots are reported, which show that supervisory control theory can be used to formally develop state-of-the-art solutions to a range of problems in swarm robotics.

Formal representation of GRAFCET to automatically generate control code

Within the engineering of control code, model-based approaches become more and more important. Basically GRAFCET serves as a suitable modeling language but lacks an exhaustive formal representation of its structure and dynamic behavior since current approaches only consider subclasses of GRAFCET. Within this article the authors depict a systematic approach for an exhaustive formal model of GRAFCET, specifically by taking enclosing steps, forcing orders and time constraints into account. Based on this formal model of GRAFCET a method together with a tool framework are presented allowing for the automatic generation of control code.

Specification and implementation of a Hierarchical and Modular meta-model for manufacturing system Control

AbstractThe paper presents a research work proposing the definition of a new approach to design and test the control logics for manufacturing systems. Starting from the Object-Oriented paradigm, a modular and hierarchical meta-model for the control specification and design is proposed. The core of the new approach is the control module, a basic standard reusable functional entity which permits to design and implement a portion of larger control logics focusing only on the behaviour of single component. The interface standardization and the hidden information concepts allow facilitating the overall control architecture design, the testing of the developed logics, a high level of reuse of the pre-designed control modules and finally an automatic control code generation. The paper describes an application of the proposed methodology for a real application, the machine SPI, providing an overview on the GUI editor and on the control code generator for a commercial soft PLC.

A Modular Modelling, Controller Synthesis and Automatic Control Code Generation Framework

The paper presents a framework for modelbased synthesis of discrete controllers and automatic generation of control code. We use a special representation of Condition/Event systems for design of models of the uncontrolled behaviour of the plant. Formal controller synthesis is performed for specification in terms of forbidden states and desired sequences. The synthesized controller is automatically transformed into a language following the IEC 1131 and is executable.

A specification technique for generating and simulating supervisory control

This paper presents an approach to the generation and validation of supervisory manufacturing computer control code. It is constructed upon a platform of object oriented control code specification and automatic control code generation tools. The object oriented specification system is presented as a foundation for the simulation environment. The specification is discussed as a backbone of an integrated design to manufacturing environemnt.