AN OPEN CONTROL-INTERFACE FOR MULTIAXIS MANUFACTURING ENTITIES

A set of heterogeneous entities is typically used to perform the vario us operations involved in manufacturing. To reason about these entitie s requires that a software representation be developed that integrate with other entities and levels of control functionality that integrati on should allow. The current software representations of manufacturing entities, MMS and the ESPRIT approach, lack the ability to robustly m odel a manufacturing entity. This paper presents a modelling methodolo gy for multi-axis manufacturing entities. This model, called open cont rol interface (OCI), provides a mechanism for controlling a multi-axis manufacturing entity from remote entities and programs. Unlike the tr aditionally used functional decomposition process to model manufacturi ng entities, the OCI approach encapsulates both physical and functiona l characteristics of manufacturing entities into modules that form the model. The physical modules make the mapping from the model to the ph ysical components correspond on an almost one-to-one basis, thus easin g the abstraction process. The separation of functional and physical m odules also provides potential for simulating the manufacturing entity to evaluate its suitability for a manufacturing system. The OCI metho dology provides a formal specification of the modules and their intera ctions, allowing for formal reasoning about the behaviour of the syste m.