Distributed control of a track based multi‐head robot

A novel closed loop track based multi‐head robot has been developed to increase the material handing throughput. This robot allows waves of autonomous robot heads to move materials in to the working path by eliminating the traditional return path. Two distributed control architectures were developed using a system comprising of desktop, embedded and single board PC's some linked by wireless communications. This paper discusses the design and impact of such control architectures, and looks at some performance boundaries.