Developing a physical emulator for a flexible manufacturing system

In order to develop, test, and validate system control software for managing flexible manufacturing systems, most laboratories have constructed an experimental testbed using actual manufacturing equipment. These experimental systems typically occupy a large amount of lab space, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to construct, and require considerable human expertise to operate. In addition, given their experimental nature, there is little or no opportunity to recapture the costs through the manufacturing of commercial products. In this paper, we propose an alternative solution for providing the essential testbed. Using dedicated micro-controllers (programmable logic controllers), we have developed a physical emulator For a flexible manufacturing cell which faithfully replicates the operating characteristics of an ensemble of physical equipment that would typically comprise a flexible manufacturing system.