Emulation as a design tool in the development of real-time control systems

摘要

A major facility for manufacturing research is being established at the National Bureau of Standards. The Automated Manufacturing Research Facility (AMRF) will provide testbed where measurement research of computer integrated manufacturing systems can be performed. The control architecture of the facility is based on a sensory-interactive, modular, hierarchical, feedback system. Each module is represented as a finite state machine that interacts through a shared time-sliced common-memory where command, feedback and database information is stored.A hierarchical control system emulator (HCSE) has been developed that allows the system to be designed and tested before implementation on the actual hardware. The HCSE has been successfully used in the AMRF project as a design management tool, providing a complete specification of the control software. It is also used as a testing aid that allows a given module (i.e., a robot control system) to interact with emulated control modules substituting for unavailable AMRF hardware.