US 7,269,475 B1Granted

Distributed control system with global contraints for controlling object motion with smart matter

AssigneeXerox Corporation

InventorsTad H. Hogg, Bjorn R. Carlson, Vineet Gupta, Andrew A. Berlin

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Abstract

Embedded in a transport assembly are arrays of microelectromechanical sensors and actuators for detecting and propelling an object. A controller having defined therein local computational agents and a global controller controls the array of sensors and actuators. The global controller provides global operating constraints to the local computational agents. The global operating constraints are developed using an approximate specification of system behavior based on simplified assumptions of an idealized system as well as limited sensor information aggregated from the array of sensors. The local computational agents compute a desired local actuator response using sensor information from a localized grouping of sensor units. To improve the accuracy of the global operating constraints, the local computational agents reduce differences between a global actuator response, computed using the global operating constraints, and the desired local actuator response. In addition, the local computational agents reduce the correlation among different parts of the transport assembly by reducing differences between actuator responses of neighborhoods of local computational agents.

Claims20

Dependent claims

A transport assembly for moving an object, comprising:

sensor units and actuator units arranged on the transport assembly;
said sensor units for providing positional information of the object;
said actuator units for moving the object relative to the transport assembly;
computational agents coupled said sensor units and said actuator units;
each computational agent receiving positional information from at least one sensor unit and computing a desired actuator response for at least one actuator unit in a spatially localized region of control on the transport assembly;
and
a global controller, coupled to said computational agents, for receiving aggregate operating characteristics from, and delivering global constraints to, said computational agents;
wherein said computational agents are grouped into a plurality of local neighborhoods;
a plurality of computational agents in each local neighborhood being:
(a) coupled to sensors and actuators that are located physically proximate to each other on the transport assembly;
and (b) communicatively coupled to each other for directly communicating their desired actuator responses to each other;
and
wherein each of said computational agents use (i) the global constraints delivered by the global controller, (ii) the desired actuator responses received from the computational agents in their local neighborhood, and (iii) the positional information from the at least one sensor unit in its spatially localized region of control, to determine adjustments to the at least one actuator unit in its spatially localized region of control to move the object along the transport assembly.

10 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.