Sequence Planner: A Framework for Control of Intelligent Automation Systems

This paper presents a framework that tackles the challenges met in the development of automation systems featuring collaborative robotics and other machines that have some degree of autonomy. These machines rely on online algorithms for both sensing and acting in order to achieve a very high level of flexibility. To take advantage of these new machines and algorithms, control systems must also be increasingly flexible. In this paper, we present a framework for control of this new class of intelligent automation systems called Sequence Planner (SP), which helps with control of both traditional automation equipment and machines with autonomy. To aid the complex task of developing automation control solutions, SP relies on supporting algorithms for control logic synthesis and online planning. SP has been implemented with plug-in support for the Robot Operating System (ROS) and applied to an industrial demonstrator. We present our findings on how SP performed as a control system for this demonstrator, where we show that it is an adequate approach to implement automation for a highly flexible single station system. As a standardized way of automating such systems is missing, we hope that our contribution will provide a foundation for how to develop intelligent automation systems.