Specification governor for fault tolerant control of large-scale manufacturing systems

In this paper, a novel approach for fault tolerant control of large-scale manufacturing systems is presented. A specification governor is introduced, which is inspired by the concept of reference governor in feedback control systems. The goal is to modify an infeasible sequence of specifications, which can be used to generate a distributed logic controller, in such a way that the desired product requirements are satisfied in case of faults. The procedure considers redundancies in the manufacturing system and has the capability of keeping the modification of the infeasible specification sequence as less as possible. A modeling process is proposed that automatically adapts fault-free models in form of signal interpreted Petri nets (SIPNs) according to the occurring faults. Based on these faulty models, it is possible to find out which of the natural language specifications in the specification sequence cannot be executed. (c) 2021 European Control Association. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This paper presents a novel approach for fault tolerant control of large-scale manufacturing systems by introducing a specification governor to modify infeasible specification sequences to meet product requirements, while automatically adapting fault-free models to identify specifications that cannot be executed.