<p>The Robotics and Automation Laboratory at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and
State University contains a Flexible Machining and Assembly System (FMAS) and
an Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS/RS). These systems were
developed for educational purposes to emulate a typical flexible manufacturing
process in industry. The AS/RS hardware was designed and constructed in a
previous project by Mark Eaglesham. His project consisted of hardware
development only and did not include control system development.</p>
<p>
The objective of this project is to design a set of software primitives to control
the AS/RS. This set of primitive control sequences for the AS/RS could be used by
future students to further develop the AS/RS control system at the device control
level or to integrate the AS/RS with the FMAS at the workcell control level. The set
of control primitives were developed in Relay Ladder Logic (RLL) on a Texas
Instruments 565 Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The set of primitives include the following functions: initialize the system, store a pallet, retrieve a pallet,
move to a specified location, and shutdown the system.</p>
<p>
A communications dialog was developed for command and control interaction
between the PLC and the workcell control computer. This protocol includes various
functions to manage the AS/RS's operations. These functions commands from the
workcell controller indicating what operation is needed and response from the
AS/RS indicating its status and system error messages.</p>
<p>
In order to test the AS/RS a program to simulate the workcell controller was
developed. This project report includes a description of a test program developed
using QuickC. Due to hardware difficulties, this test program was not implemented.
The AS/RS primitives were tested using Texas Instrument's TISOFT RLL
development and monitoring software package.</p> / Master of Engineering
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/40807 |
| Date | 26 January 2010 |
| Creators | Lawrence, Terry |
| Contributors | Industrial and Systems Engineering |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Master's project |
| Format | BTD, application/pdf |
| Relation | LD5655.V851_1996.L397.pdf |
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