On the active control properties of branching nodes in complex conveyor systems

This paper describes a new distributed model based on the active control properties at each crossing or branching nodes in the large scale, complicated and networked conveyor systems. Based on the RFID and routing technologies, this model controls the unit-load transfer channel/branches by actively executing and selecting conflict-free & optimal routing in the embedded devices at each branching nodes and, thus, achieved the distributed control of method based on each active control nodes. With this control model, we can achieve the control of complicated unit-load conveying systems of any size, and provide convenient scalability for the system simultaneously.