Hybrid Control Structure and Reconfiguration Capabilities in Bionic Assembly System

This paper presents the research focused on the investigation of working scenarios and efficiency of next generation of modern assembly systems. These systems are known as Bionic Assembly System (BAS). It is based on biologically inspired principles of self-organisation, reduced centralized control, networking between units and natural parallel distribution of processes. BAS control system combines two principles: subordination from factory level to BAS control structure, and self-organization at the shop floor level. This concept is here called hybrid control structure. Informational interface between the subordinating and self-organizing subsystems is called the BAS Cloud. BAS is a human centric system which promotes the integration of workers in the working process. Human tasks on the shop floor are performed by the shop floor operators. Human tasks in the control system are performed by the system operator. He makes the final decisions. Main goal of BAS is to increase system efficiency and robustness. This can be achieved using reconfiguration. Various reconfiguration capabilities are described in this paper, where the investigation is limited to a normal working mode. The results show that production systems with high technical similarity with BAS can increase their efficiency using the proposed concepts. This represents a promising direction of development of future modern assembly systems.