Experimental comparison of control architectures

Abstract

Most control systems of flexible production cells have a hierarchical structure. They become very complicated and difficult to maintain and modify when the underlying production cells grow in size and complexity. Moreover, they are characterised by a relatively high sensitivity to failures. As opposed to that, heterarchical control systems are flexible, modular, easy to modifY, and-to some extent-fault-tolerant. In this paper, the performance of two control systems, with a hierarchical and a heterarchical structure, based on an exemplary flexible production cell is evaluated by means of simulation experiments. Under ideal circumstances, both control systems perform equally well.