Design of a supervisory control system for multiple robotic systems

This paper presents a design experience of a supervisory control system for coordination of multiple robotic devices. To effectively program job commands, a Petri net-type graphical robot language(PGRL) is proposed, where some functions for coordination among tasks such as concurrency and synchronization, can be easily programmed. Each task of PGRL is described by employing formal model languages, which are composed of three modules, sensory, data handling, and action module. It is expected that by using our proposed PGRL and formal model languages, one can efficiently describe a job or task, and hence can easily operate a complex real-time concurrent system. The proposed control system has been implemented by using VME-based 32-bit microprocessor boards and a real-time multitasking operating system (VxWorks), and is shown to successfully work for robotic jobs.