Distributive behavior-based control for a flexible conveying system

This paper presents a control strategy for a proposed flexible conveying system (FCS) which consists of multiple arrays of cells. Each wheel of cell is driven by a two degree-of-freedom mechanism. The FCS can handle multiple objects independently and simultaneously. The position and direction of a targeted object are directly controlled based on the summation of driving force and moment from the supporting cells. Importantly, the behavior-based control with subsumption architecture is applied to control the direction of driving force of supporting cells and to manipulate an object towards its desired position. The collision avoidance among objects is also implemented under the behavior-based control. Finally, the dynamical simulation of the proposed system is used to illustrate its system performance.