Efficient Control Software Design for Automated Material Handling Systems Based on a Two-Layer Architecture

Combining high throughputs and good process quality, automated material handling systems are widely used in industry. In order to fully utilize their potential, automated material handling systems have to be highly specialized and custom-built, requiring individually implemented control software. Due to the fact that a modular structure of the software is often missing, individual implementations require extensive manual programming, which is labor intensive, error prone and leads to software structures which are hard to maintain. In this paper, a software architecture is presented that enables a modular composition of control software for automated material handling systems. This software architecture is based on a twolayer architecture and separates the decisions made by the material flow from the control of the conveyors. As a result of this separation, predefined modules for both layers can be created, therefore allowing an integrated modularization of the control software. Such an integrated modularization enables the creation of a software by interconnecting predefined modules and setting their parameters, and is therefore efficient in terms of time and labor.