Decentralized or Centralized Control

  • Thread starter Ali Reza Fereidunian
  • Start date
A

Thread Starter

Ali Reza Fereidunian

Consider the situation that we have few welding robots (KUKA), and all of them are controlled by a main 416 Siemens PLC.

We have two strategies for controlling the welding and material handling applications of robots:
1. By the robot controllers.
2. By the main PLC or an interlock PLC for each 3 or 4 robots.

Which one of them do you recommend?
 
L

Lynn at Alist

A partial answer - can the robots run independantly? That would be my key decision point. Assmuning both options are as practical and safe ...

If you can run 2 robots if the 3rd is down, then doing things 'decentralized' is critical - remove as many 'central' things as you can.

But if 1 down robot kills them all (ie: they cooperate on a single line), then more centralized control will reduce cost and interlock complexity.

- LynnL
 
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