An architecture for metamorphic control of holonic manufacturing systems

Conventional centralised scan-based control systems are not suited to the evolutionary nature of holonic manufacturing systems, i.e. the form and substance of holonic systems undergo constant transformation (metamorphosis) throughout their lifetime. As a result, real-time control of such holonic systems requires a radically different approach from that of traditional unit level regulatory control systems necessitating a new system-level distributed control approach. Control systems based on this approach can termed as metamorphic control systems. The engineering of such software-centric metamorphic control systems for dynamically reconfigurable distributed multisensor-based holonic systems is addressed in this paper. An integrated and uniform event-driven control architecture is specified for various functional levels of the metamorphic control system. This architecture utilises the emerging International Electrotechnical Commission function block standard (IEC 61499) for industrial process measurement and control systems to specify the requisite behaviour of distributed control software components (agents).