Distributed control system architecture and method for a material transport system

A method of configuring a distributed control system for a material transport system, comprising:

• defining a set of neighborhoods including electromechanical devices composing the material transport system, wherein each of the neighborhoods includes the electromechanical devices that are likely to interact based on topology of the material transport system;
• providing a low-level controller for the electromechanical devices, the low-level controllers being configured to translate generalized control commands to low-level control commands for the respective electromechanical device and to report status of the respective electromechanical device;
• providing a higher-level controller that controls all low-level controllers associated with at least one of the neighborhoods via the generalized control commands;
• compartmentalizing processing within the higher-level controller so that information regarding no more than the electromechanical devices composing the associated neighborhood is used to formulate the generalized control commands for low-level controllers associated with that one neighborhood.

A distributed method for controlling movement of material to be transported in a material transport system, comprising:

• defining a neighborhood including a contiguous subset of electromechanical devices composing the material transport system, the electromechanical devices including track zones configured to control the movement of the material and to report zone status information;
• providing low-level controllers to control the subset of electromechanical devices and to receive status information from the electromechanical devices, the low-level controllers including zone controllers, each of which is configured to control and receive zone status information from a respective track zone and to receive messages from zone threads in the neighborhood;
• and
• configuring each of the zone threads to:
• determine using the zone status information when the material is entering a respective track zone;
• determine from stored information updated by a neighboring, upstream zone thread an entry speed at which the material is entering the respective track zone;
• issue a motor control command to the respective track zone to establish the speed of the material in accordance with a speed profile message forwarded by the upstream zone thread and the entry speed;
• determine from the stored information updated by neighboring, downstream zones the speed at which the material should enter a neighboring downstream zone;
• determine from a potential entry speed and location of a destination of the material a speed profile of the material in one or more neighboring, downstream zones,
• send the speed profile message to the one or more neighboring, downstream zones causing the speed profile to be executed.

A distributed method for routing material from a source to a destination in a material transport system including track zones and directors connecting the track zones, comprising:

• launching the material from the source;
• when the material enters a track neighborhood that includes a director through which the material must pass to proceed to the destination, notifying the director of the approach of the material;
• the director, in response to the notifying, selecting an optimal route for the material based on the destination and stored routing information indicating for each material transport system destination a director exit angle and a metric characterizing quality of a path to the destination originating from the director exit angle;
• and
• the director subsequently decelerating the material, rotating to the director exit angle associated with the optimal route and relaunching the material along the optimal route.