Programming Abstractions for Simulation and Testing on Smart Manufacturing Systems

Chiao Hsieh, Daniel Wu, Yubin Koh, Sayan Mitra

Abstract: A smart manufacturing system is a complex cyber-physical system consisting of a collection of component machines and a floorplan layout defining the spatial relationship between components. Each component may be of different physical behavior with different control software. Simulation and testing on smart manufacturing systems require a software infrastructure that can orchestrate the execution of heterogenous, cyber-physical components besides modeling physical machines in respect to floorplan layouts. Automated simulation as a result is challenging and error-prone. Recent strides in formal modeling of cyber-physical systems and programming languages offer some new techniques for addressing this challenge. In this paper, we present a compositional automata-based modeling formalism and programming abstractions to design coordination logic between heterogeneous robots in different layouts. Our formalism allows us to automatically simulate and compare performance metrics for different floorplan layouts. We implement our proof-of-concept prototype with the challenging simulation environment for 2021 Agile Robotics for Industrial Automation Competition. Our experiment results demonstrate how our simulation can be used to evaluate and compare performance under different layouts and applicable for reconfiguration and virtual commissioning.