ASRS Access Zones With Verified Rover Shutdown
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Solution Overview
Problem
Automated storage and retrieval systems face challenges in integrating secure personnel access zones without disrupting system efficiency, particularly in ensuring safe and controlled access to the storage and transport space while maintaining high rover speeds and dynamic distribution.
Innovation Solution
The system incorporates controlled, shielded, and secure human access zones integrated into the ASRS architecture, with actuable closures and a secure access zone PLC to manage rover evacuation and shutdown, ensuring personnel access while maintaining system integrity and compliance with SIL-3 category criteria.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If personnel access zones are integrated into the ASRS transport space, then personnel safety and controlled access are improved, but system complexity and operational disruption increase
Solution Approach 1:
The transport space is segmented into multiple secured access zones, each with independent closures and control systems. This allows personnel access to be granted in specific zones without affecting the entire system, reducing operational disruption while maintaining safety through localized control segments.
Solution Approach 2:
A control system acts as an intermediary between personnel access requests and the rover fleet. The control system coordinates rover evacuation from access zones, manages closure actuation, and ensures safe re-entry, thereby reducing direct operational complexity while maintaining safety protocols.
2Reliability
If rovers are commanded to evacuate and shutdown in access zones, then personnel safety is ensured, but system productivity and operational continuity decrease
Solution Approach 1:
Rovers are commanded to evacuate access zones before personnel entry is permitted. This preliminary evacuation action ensures safety is established before productivity concerns arise, allowing the system to resume normal operations quickly after personnel complete their tasks.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables periodic interruptions of rover operations for personnel access, with rovers shutting down during access events and resuming afterward. This periodic action pattern maintains overall system productivity by limiting disruptions to specific time windows rather than continuous operation halts.
3Ease of operation
If closures are actuable to secure access zones, then personnel access control is improved, but device complexity and response time requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
Closures are configured to automatically actuate when personnel access zones are activated. The system self-manages the closure operation without requiring manual intervention, simplifying the operator's task while the underlying control system handles the complexity of coordinating multiple closures across different zones.
Data Source
AI summary
A transportation system having a transportation space including destinations distributed in the transportation space, multiple independent automated vehicles configured for free roving through the transportation space to and between the destinations so that the vehicles are dynamically distributed through the transportation space, a control system communicably connected via a remote communication link to each of the vehicles and having a system controller that addresses each vehicle to different destinations, and the control system having a vehicle accountant controller separate and distinct from the system controller and configured to, and command stopping, via a black channel protocol, of the remote communication link, that effects a verified and secure shut down command.