Java-based control architecture for reconfigurable micro-assembly systems

The aim of the research project "MiniProd", which is carried out by the Fraunhofer IPA together with industrial partners and sponsored by the BMBF (federal ministry for education and research / 02PD2370), is to develop a marketable, miniaturized highly-flexible micro-assembly system. It is supposed to be capable of mapping the correct proportions between a product and its production environment and further on being able to integrateprocesses which had previously run separately. For this system a Java-based control architecture was developed which enables a "plug and produce" principle. It dynamically recognizes new modules being plugged in and makes them available in a case-tool to be integrated in the production cycle. Therefore the Jini technology is used to realize the modularization and make use of the distributed architecture. The case-tool offers capabilities like state-based or sequence-orientated modeling. Using this model the source code for the sequence control is generated automatically.