Control of flexible-manufacturing workcells using extended Moore automata

The modeling and control of flexible-manufacturing workcells (FMCs) has generally been performed in a hierarchical structure, where at the highest level they have been modeled as discrete-event systems (DESs). In this paper, a new DES control synthesis technique that combines Moore automata and controlled-automata theories to synthesize supervisors is presented. The obtained supervisors can monitor multiple pieces of information regarding the behavior of the FMC and can explicitly generate control commands issued to individual cell devices