Distributed control architecture for intelligent systems

During the past few years, the need for large scale and complex systems has become obvious [1,2]. They are necessary to intelligently carry out tasks in the area of transportation, manufacturing, and maintenance. Up to now, the control structures were usually designed as a hierarchical and centralized structure with a top-down process for planning and decision making. The number and complexity of the hierarchical layers determine the time that is required for a reaction and also for the quality of a chosen action. In most cases, additional components, actuators or sensors have to be added during the development cycle to improve the capability of the overall system. In this case and if the integration of the components' capabilities is required, it is easy to see the disadvantages of the hierarchical and centralized approach in comparison with the advantages existing at the initial system design process. In contrast to that, distributed or decentralized control architectures reveal their main advantages when it is necessary to enhance the system, to integrate components, and to maintain the system. The main disadvantage of not centralized architectures is having to make sure that the system will fulfill an overall or global goal. To investigate these problems, a distributed control architecture for intelligent systems was developed at the University of Karlsruhe. In this paper, the methods for dead-lock-free coordination and cooperation are explained further it is described how the architecture can be used in the manufacturing area.