Experimental comparison of control architectures

Most control systems of flexible production cells have a hierarchical structure. They become very complicated and difficult to maintain and modify when the underlying production cells grow in size and complexity. Moreover, they are characterised by a relatively high sensitivity to failures. As opposed to that, heterarchical control systems are flexible, modular, easy to modify, and – to some extent – fault-tolerant. In this paper, the performance of two control systems, with a hierarchical and a heterarchical structure, based on an exemplary flexible production cell is evaluated by means of simulation experiments. Under ideal circumstances, both control systems perform equally well. Keywords Modelling, control architectures, simulation, performance evaluation 

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: IFIP
• Authors: J. M. van de Mortel-Fronczak, J. P. M. Schmitz, J. E. Rooda
• Keywords: Control Systems, Flexible Production Cell, IFIP 1999, Production Cell, Programming Languages