Robust deadlock control of automated manufacturing systems with multiple unreliable resources

Over the past decade or so, the deadlock control problem of automated manufacturing systems (AMSs) with unreliable resources received a great deal of research attention. Most existing work to date assumes that the studied AMSs contain a single unreliable resource. Most existing control methods belong to the class of deadlock avoidance ones. This paper focuses on deadlock prevention for AMS with multiple unreliable resources. Our goal is to guarantee the continuous production of those parts not requiring any of the failed resources in case of any resource failure. A Petri net model is developed to characterize the failure and repair of unreliable resources. Based on it, a robust deadlock prevention controller that satisfies the above desired property is proposed. Experimental results indicate its effectiveness and superiority over the state-of-the-art methods.