Global resource locator for autonomous cooperative control systems

In an industrial controller including a plurality of autonomous cooperative units (ACUs) implemented in computers intercommunicating on an electronic network and operating generally according to a stored program to divide a predefined job among ACUs by a bidding process including bids communicated on the electronic network among the ACUs, the improvement comprising additional stored program executed by the ACUs to:

• (a) identify potential bid request receivers for each ACU being a subset of all ACUs of the plurality;
• (b) at each ACU storing a list of potential bid request receivers in the computer implementing the ACU;
• (c) receiving at a given ACU a description of a job;
• (d) cause the given ACU to preferentially communicate requests for bids related to the description of the job from the given ACU only with other ACUs of the list of potential bid request receivers;
• whereby communication traffic on the network is reduced.

A system for performing at least one job, the system comprising:

• a network;
• and
• a plurality of processing devices coupled to one another by way of the network;
• wherein each processing device has information regarding which of the other processing devices are potentially available to bid on at least one job being handled by the respective processing device, and wherein the respective processing device utilizes the information to send bid requests only to those potentially available processing devices.

A distributed processing system comprising:

• a plurality of processing devices coupled to one another by a network;
• and
• a memory unit coupled to at least one of the network and one of the processing devices, wherein the memory unit stores information about the processing devices and is capable of providing subsets of the information to the processing devices,
• wherein the subsets of the information provided to the processing devices allow each processing device to make their own determinations as to which of the other processing devices are appropriate for contacting in relation to possible handling of jobs.

A method of coordinating a plurality of distributed processing devices to perform portions of jobs, the method comprising:

• providing information to the distributed processing devices, wherein the respective information provided to each respective distributed processing device includes at least some information about statuses of others of the distributed processing devices;
• performing analyses at the distributed processing devices using the information to dynamically determine clusters of the distributed processing devices that are appropriate for performing at least some of the portions of the jobs;
• making decisions to send signals from at least some of the distributed processing devices to at least some of the other distributed processing devices within the respective clusters based upon the analyses;
• and
• sending the signals so that operations of the distributed processing devices in each cluster in performing the portions of jobs are coordinated.