INTELLIGENT MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS (SMART-MECHATRONICS AND CIM) AT LOUISIANA-STATE-UNIVERSITY

The Smart Mechatronics/Intelligent Manufacturing Research initiative a l Louisiana State University has designed and implemented an object co ntrol model for a simple manufacturing cell. Using object oriented pro gramming and design has allowed the internal program structure (virtua l cell space) to closely match the physical cell construction (physica l cell space). This paper discusses the second phase of the cell imple mentation in which the existing C++ objects were implemented as autono mous units under operating system control. The operating system used i s Microsoft(R) Windows(TM) and Windows for Workgroups(TM) 3.1. Since e ach object is autonomous, they can assume the properties of self-monit oring agents in the system rather than simple request servers under th e sole control of the calling object. Communication between objects is facilitated by the operating system using dynamic data exchange (DDE) calls or by compiling the module into dynamic link library (DLL) modu les. This arrangement of system control architecture increases system autonomy, concurrence, and ease of use for a relatively small overhead penalty.