Industrial Plant Device Coordination for Collision-Free Movement
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Solution Overview
Problem
In complex industrial plants, coordinating the operations of multiple movable pieces of equipment to avoid collisions and optimize movement speeds is challenging, leading to reduced operational efficiency and potential safety issues.
Innovation Solution
A computer-implemented method that uses a ruleset to determine actions for movable devices in industrial plants, ensuring collision avoidance and optimizing movement speeds by considering the locations and intended operations of all devices involved, with a mutual cryptographic trust relationship for validation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If every piece of movable equipment is individually responsible for avoiding collisions with other equipment, then collision avoidance is achieved, but the moving speed of the equipment is drastically reduced
Solution Approach 1:
A central coordinator is introduced as an intermediary that receives location and operation intent data from all movable equipment, determines collision-free actions using a ruleset, and commands the equipment accordingly. This mediator handles the complex coordination task centrally, allowing individual devices to move at higher speeds without sacrificing collision avoidance capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The central coordinator determines the appropriate actions for each device in advance based on current locations and intended operations, before the devices actually move. This preliminary determination of safe trajectories and speeds allows equipment to move efficiently without real-time hesitation or excessive speed reduction.
2Productivity
If equipment moves across large distances within the plant at high speeds, then productivity is improved, but the risk of collisions increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system continuously receives feedback from equipment about their current locations and intended operations, and the central coordinator uses this feedback to dynamically determine safe actions. This closed-loop feedback mechanism enables high-speed movement while maintaining collision avoidance through real-time monitoring and coordination.
Solution Approach 2:
The central coordinator acts as a mediator that reconciles the conflicting goals of high-speed movement and collision avoidance by optimizing the actions of all devices based on their locations and operation intents, enabling productive high-speed operation without increased collision risk.
3Speed
If better coordination between different pieces of equipment is implemented, then moving speeds may be increased, but the complexity of the control system increases
Solution Approach 1:
The complex coordination logic is extracted from individual devices and placed in a dedicated central coordinator. This separation allows the coordination system to be optimized independently, handling the complexity centrally while keeping individual device controllers simpler and focusing only on executing commanded actions.
Data Source
AI summary
A computer-implemented method (100) for operating a plurality of devices (21-25) in an industrial plant (1), comprising the steps of: —obtaining (110) at least the location (21a) of a to-be-controlled device (21) within the industrial plant (1); —obtaining (120) at least the locations (22a-25a) of other devices (22-25) in the vicinity of the to-be-controlled device (21); —determining (130), based at least in part on a ruleset (3) with rules that are dependent at least on the locations (22a-25a) of the other devices (22-25), at least one action (4) that may be performed by the to-be-controlled device (21); and —causing (140) the to-be-controlled device (21) to perform the at least one action (4).