Annual Review in Automatic Programming最新文献

This paper presents a new conception for a distributed task-oriented real-time operating system comprising a compiler, an operating system kernel and communication packages. The system TOROS supplies the tools for a uniform programming of complex process control applications on heterogenous hardware including workstation, PC, programmable controller and microcontroller. The whole control task is split into a set of small modules. These modules are uniquely programmed by defining a state machine and using guarded commands. They are connected logically through calls to tasks provided by other modules. The specification of the modules is done in an hardware independent language. At compile time the modules are distributed to specified target computers. The system automatically translates each module into the particular code and realizes the communication between the modules either on the same computer or through the links.

Usually, there are two alternative approaches to program the application functions to be performed by a hard real-time system: the method of sequential programming of tasks often performed under control of a multi-tasking operating system and, on the other hand, the quasi-parallel description of application functions which are realized by means of a cyclic execution e.g. of a programmable logic control. Although being alternatives in a wide area of applications, there are always aspects of each form of programming where the solution for a specific problem is not really satisfying. Therefore we tried to make use of a combined programming of real-time applications by means of both methods which showed to offer an optimal programming toolset. This paper presents specific characteristics of the two methods, aspects of the combination and examples coming from a new robot programming language which is designed this way.

In this paper we describe a new Architecture for hard Real-Time Environments (ARTIE). The architecture is essentially an asymmetrical two-processor system. It consists of a task processor for the application programs and the operating system's shell functions, and of a reliable co-processor for the real-time operating system kernel. We have formally derived the specifications for the kernel programs and proved that the programs behave according to the specifications. The practical performance of the system is evaluated by simulating a typical real-time application on a workstation.

The ability to supervise and control highly non-linear and time variant bioprocess is of considerable importance to the biotechnological industries which are continually striving to obtain improved productivity and to reduce process variability. The proposed Intelligent Supervisory System consists of several modules, but in this contribution most attention was given to the fault detection module. Four pattern recognition techniques (Artificial Neural Networks, Principal Component Analysis, Multi-way Principal Component Analysis and Autoassociative Neural Networks) were applied to an industrial fed-batch process. It is shown that a deviation from nominal behaviour of the process can be detected even early on in the fermentation run. Data from industrial penicillin G fermenters is used to demonstrate the procedures.

This paper presents an architecture to build distributed systems for the process control. The agents share information by the communication tools developed in Unix. In this way it is possible to link expert systems with other processes for the sensor input/output or interface with the world. At the same time modification for a new CLIPS structure are proposed in order to build Blackboards.

To exploit the potential offered by integrated intelligent control systems, it is essential that underlying architectures are available that are able to integrate not only hardware and software, but also human beings into the control loop. By studying the way that a human workforce operates, this paper suggests how a human systems analogy can be drawn up that highlighted some fundamental differences between the way that humanbased, and computer-based systems operate. One of the key differences is that humans are able to reason not only logically, but also in terms of time. This paper addresses the philosphy behind the DENIS architecture — a distributed architecture that enables this high level of compatability between autonomous intelligent agents.

Expert systems have now reached maturity and an ever growing number of applications make use of this technology. Nevertheless, specific requirements of real time applications have significantly slowed down the use of these techniques in this area: this is first due to incompatibilities between time and memory requirements of AI algorithms and real time specificities, but also to a lack of adaptation to the growing complexity of these systems.

In this paper a real time architecture for Knowledge Based Systems: REAKT (Real Time Knowledge Tool) which aims at combining the expressiveness and power of Knowledge Based Systems with the efficiency and predictability of real time systems is presented.

MAP provides communication support for manufacturing applications and factory automation. MMS and Network Management are some applications that depend on MAP for the communication support. These applications use MAP to communicate with manufacturing devices at the cell level. In this paper, we describe the architecture of LITMAP Stack implemented at LIT and discuss its ability to support soft real-time industrial applications. This discussion is based on the scheduling ability of this architecture and the performance of LITMAP Stack.

Real-time database management systems have become a hot topic in the research and development community of late (Fort94a,Grah93,WCPP93). In addition there has been a movement in the standards community to examine and develop extensions to existing and proposed query languages to support real-time (Fish94,Fort94,Fort94a,FS94,Gord94).

This paper examines the state of research into real-time database management systems in the areas of database structuring, transaction structuring, transaction processing, concurrency control, recovery and real-time transaction scheduling. We then extend the findings and trends of this work into the high level specification of data definition language, data manipulation language and data control language extensions for the standard SQL2 and emerging SQL3 database query languages.

The lack of a common framework for the uniform application of the solution techniques when developing intelligent process control system, have given rise to the HINT project (Heterogeneous INTegration architecture for intelligent control systems) whose main objectives are the design and realization of a supporting software architecture and the development of a methodology that allows the integration and cooperation of different control techniques (mostly, Artificial Intelligence-related) within a consistent computational environment. The aim is to deal with the real problems encountered in in-place industrial process control.