Design and control of flexible transfer system

The flexible transfer system (FTS) is a self-organizing manufacturing system composed of autonomous robotic modules which transfer a palette carrying the machining parts. For the control of FTS, two functional requirement must be considered: one is the optimization problem of the system performance such as the amount of transported material; and the other one is the realization of the adaptability to dynamical environmental changes by unexpected machining problems or sudden changes of the machining task. In this article, we propose a centralized and distributed control method for the FTS, and discuss how to realize both the efficiency and flexibility.