Development of Factory-Antomation-Cell Control Language Based on Petri Nets

A new programming method named CCL (cell control language) for factory-automation systems has been developed. In CCL programming, a sequence of machine actions is described with a subclass of Petri nets. This subclass is almost equivalent to a state transition diagram, and each step of the sequence is described in a high-level language based on SLIM (standard language for industrial manipulators; JIS B 8439) . Consequently, as a development environment for CCL programs, CCL Editor is developed. CCL Editor has a graphical user interface for editing a sequence by using the subclass of Petri nets and for describing each step of the sequence in the SLIM-based language. Moreover, CCL Editor has the functions for generating executable programs from CCL source modules and for monitoring execution status of the program in real time. Using CCL, we can increase productivity and maintainability of programs for factoryautomation systems.