JPH0784516A - Formation of program for execution of control - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To decrease program designing stages by automatically forming the operation procedures of apparatus from the information on apparatus constitution of the equipment to be controlled and the regulations relating to the operations and stages of the respective apparatus to be automatically derived therefrom. CONSTITUTION:The apparatus operating regulations of the apparatus and the apparatus state transition regulations stated by a designer are included as conditions together with the states of the external apparatus exclusive of the corresponding apparatus into the conditions of the operations stored in an apparatus operation regulation memory means 7 and the conditions of the state transition stored in an apparatus state transition regulation memory means 8. The operation procedures of the apparatus over the entire part of the equipment are automatically formed by combining these apparatus operation regulations and the apparatus state transition regulations. Then, there is no need for forming the determined operation expressions of a flow chart type. The apparatus operation regulations and apparatus state transition regulations described above are settable if only the partial items relating to the discrete apparatus are noticed and, therefore, the designer's errors are decreased before such errors arise.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a control execution program generation method for automatically generating a control execution program of a programmable controller for controlling a plant or the like.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A programmable controller for controlling various plants and the like must generate a control execution program in order to operate it effectively. Therefore,
In the past, the designer manually performed the operation assuming all conditions such as the operation of the controlled object, its control condition, and the timing of each operation.

However, since it becomes difficult to perform manual programming in consideration of all of these conditions as the control target becomes complicated, these conditions are summarized as target knowledge, and only the outline of the device operation procedure is designated. By doing so, the control execution program has been automatically generated.

In order to automatically generate such a control execution program, it is necessary to input a control specification for designating an outline of a device operation procedure. Conventionally, a method of showing a flow of operation of the device in a flow chart format is generally used. It was target.

[0005]

However, in the conventional specification input method proposed as described above, it is necessary to create a device operation procedure, which is a work requiring skill. For example, there has been proposed a method of generating a detailed device operation procedure by interpolating the outline of the device operation procedure using a condition that restricts the operation or state of each device (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 1-245305). In this method, the condition based on the relationship between multiple devices is not taken into consideration. Therefore, when operating multiple devices in cooperation, the procedure and timing must still be set by the designer. I have to. For this reason, the designer needs to grasp all the information on all the constituent devices of the controlled facility, and to identify the relevant items that determine the operation procedure from there, just enough.

However, this is difficult in a large-scale facility, and there is a problem that omissions and mistakes are likely to occur.
Moreover, the input format itself of the device operation procedure is also defined in the operation expression description of the flowchart format, and the work of creating this is complicated.

Further, when a part of the configuration or the number of devices is changed, it is necessary to change the device operation procedure. However, in the control specification of the flow chart format, not only is it difficult to identify the part that needs to be changed, In many cases, the flow chart structure itself had to be changed, and past design cases could not be effectively used.

Therefore, in the present application, the detailed equipment operation procedure of the entire controlled equipment required for automatically generating the control execution program is automatically calculated from the data consisting of the partial rules regarding the operation and state of each equipment. The purpose is to reduce the creation of this equipment operation procedure, which was complicated for the designer.

[0009]

In order to solve the above-mentioned problems, a rule for storing the state of each device to be controlled as a device operation rule and causing the state of each device to be controlled is defined as a device Is stored as a device state transition rule represented by a logical expression of the device state and the device state, the state of the first device designated by the designer is extracted from the device operation rules, and the state of the first device is extracted. Retrieving a rule to be generated from the device operation rule, extracting a state of a second device that constitutes the rule to generate the state of the first device, and generating a procedure of operation of the device of the controlled facility. Is characterized by.

[0010]

According to the control execution program generation method of the present invention, the designer describes the device operation rules and the device state transition rules of the individual devices, the operation conditions and the device states stored in the device operation rule storage means. The condition of the state transition stored in the transition rule storage means also includes the state of the external device other than the device as a condition, and the operation procedure of the device of the entire facility is automatically combined by combining these device operation rules and device state transition rules. Since it is generated dynamically, there is no need to create a predetermined action expression in the form of a flowchart. This equipment operation rule and equipment state transition rule can be set by focusing on only partial items related to individual equipment without the designer having to understand the entire large-scale and complicated target equipment. Errors in control specifications due to lack of understanding can be prevented and the quality of control programs can be improved.

If most of the device operation rules and the device state transition rules are automatically prepared by using the general knowledge about the operation and state of the device prepared in advance, the input work will be greatly performed. The work that is reduced and the designer does is only the work to input the configuration information of the device.
This device configuration information is given in the most upstream process in the conventional design work of the control execution program, but the present invention has made it possible to automate all the downstream processes. The design man-hours of
Productivity is dramatically improved.

[0012]

Embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a system configuration of a control execution program generation method according to an embodiment of the present invention. The control device 1 stores, via the bus 2, a program storage device 3 that stores a program generated by the control device 1, device configuration information, and target knowledge that stores knowledge about a control target referred to for generating the program. Storage device 4,
A program development knowledge storage device 5 that stores program development knowledge used when a control execution program is generated using this target knowledge, and a device operation procedure storage device 6 that stores the device operation procedure of the control target derived by the control device 1. ,
A device state transition rule storage device 8, which is used when deriving a device operation procedure, is connected, and a display device interface 9, an input device interface 10,
A programmable controller interface 11 is connected.

Further, the display device interface 9 is a display for presenting information such as device configuration information, device operation rules, device state transition rules, and charts showing the generated device operation procedure to the designer. A device 12 is connected, and an input device for a designer to input data such as device configuration information, device operation rules, device state transition rules, and input information for deriving a device operating procedure to the input device interface 10. 13, a programmable controller 14 for controlling various plants and the like is connected to the programmable controller interface 11, and the programmable controller 14 controls a controlled object 15 such as a plant according to the generated program.

The control execution program generation method which is the object of the present invention is a portion of the control device 1 to the input device 13 which is surrounded by a broken line in the figure. FIG. 2 shows a block diagram of the target equipment 15 which is an embodiment of the present invention. This equipment is
It is an example of equipment in a sewage treatment plant called sand settling equipment, and is composed of a plurality of devices as shown in the figure. The function of the equipment is that the settling sand that has settled at the bottom of the settling basin
Downstream sedimentation rake The sand rafting machine pulls the sand around the sand blasting machine and ejects it outside the pond using the pressure water pump.After washing in the sand scouring machine, it passes through the conveyor and skip hoist, and then to the specified sand hopper. It is to store.

In the following, this sand settling facility will be used as an application example in the description of this example. FIG. 3 shows, as an example of the device configuration information that is a part of the knowledge stored in the target knowledge storage device 4, the device configuration information regarding each target device of the sedimentation treatment facility.

The main element of the stored data is composed of the name of the target device and various attribute items representing the configuration information between the devices such as the upstream device, the downstream device, and various auxiliary devices for the target device. In each attribute item, the corresponding device name is described as a value.

For example, a device named "sand pump pressure water pump" 31 has the attribute "water absorption source" 31a as "water receiving tank" and the attribute item "water supply source" 31b as "sand setter". There is no device corresponding to the item “water supply valve” 31c, and “sand sander pressure water valve” and “sand sander discharge valve” are described as the attribute item “discharge valve” 31d.

Regarding the equipment "NO.2 conveyor" 32, the attribute item "upstream equipment" 32a is "NO.1 conveyor", the attribute item "downstream equipment" 32b is "sand set skip hoist", and the attribute item " “NO.
Two conveyor wash valves "(not shown) are each described.

As described above, since the attribute items of the configuration information to be described differ depending on the type of device, in the present embodiment,
For general equipment such as pumps, conveyors, valves,
The attribute item of the configuration information is prepared in advance in a frame format, and the designer adopts a method of setting necessary configuration information for a specific target facility according to the attribute item.

The target device configuration information is input by the designer using the input device 13. For example, the device configuration diagram is such that the scanner reads a device configuration drawing drawn on the paper by the designer. By using the input method and the device configuration information interpretation method, it is possible to interpret the device configuration diagram input by the designer and automatically identify the device configuration relationship.

FIGS. 4, 5, and 6 show, as an example of the device operation rules stored in the device operation rule storage device 7, the device operation rules for each device of the sedimentation treatment facility. The main elements of the stored data are the name of the target device, the attribute item “motion” that describes the set of motions that the target device can take, and various device motions that are the attribute values of the attribute item “motion”, It is composed of operation contract conditions such as attribute items "starting condition", "operating condition", and "stop condition" that define the preconditions for issuing the operation command and the stop command.

When an operation command, such as a "drive" operation, continues until a "stop" command is received, the operation rule conditions are "starting condition", "operating condition", and "stop condition". Three items are provided. Here, "starting conditions" are items that describe conditions that need to be satisfied only when issuing a driving command, and "operating conditions" describe conditions that must always be satisfied while the device is operating. It is an item to be done.

Therefore, both the "starting condition" and the "operating condition" must be satisfied in order to issue an operation command to the equipment. The "stop condition" is an item that describes a condition that needs to be satisfied when a stop command is issued to the device.

When the operation command is received, such as "open" and "closed" of the valve in FIG. 5 and "up" and "down" of the skip hoist in FIG. 6, the operation is completed in a relatively short time and automatically. The operation that leads to the stop state is
Items such as "open operation condition", "close operation condition", "upward operation condition", and "downward operation condition" are provided one by one. this is,
Operations such as “open”, “closed” and “up” and “down”
This is because there is no rule regarding the operating state that corresponds to the above-mentioned "driving condition" or a rule regarding the stop operation that corresponds to the "stop condition".

The operation contract condition is described by a device state described later, a device condition negation (not), or a logical expression consisting of a device condition or a device condition negation conjunctive (and) or disjunction (or). To do. As the device status, not only the device status of the device itself but also the device status of an external device can be set. For example, among the device states in the attribute item “operating condition” 47c of the “sand setter” 47, the “specified water level” is the device state of the “sand setter” itself, and the “sand seter feed valve fully open”, “ Sand set washing machine drain valve fully open "," N
O. "1 Conveyor in operation" is the state of equipment outside the "sand setter".

The designer may describe all of these device operating rules from scratch, but depending on the type of device, the work of setting the device operating rules can be reduced as follows. For example, as an abstract concept of a device, it is described that “device general” 41 has “operation” and “stop” in the attribute item “operation” 41a, and the abstract concept “pump” of pumps in general. “42” is set as a subordinate concept of “general equipment”. In FIG. 4, the hierarchical structure shown by the actual battle 43 represents this superordinate concept-subordinate concept relationship.

In this case, the attribute item "operation" of "pump"
The attribute value of 1 inherits the attribute values “operation” and “stop” of the attribute item “operation” 41a of “general equipment”. on the other hand,
The attribute items "starting condition" 41b, "operating condition" 41c, and "stop condition" 41d of "equipment general" cannot be set at all because the concept of "equipment general" is highly abstract. For general "pumps", the attribute item "starting condition" 42b is "water valve fully closed and discharge valve fully closed".
However, in the attribute item "operating condition" 42c, "water supply source water level is normal"
"Water source water level is normal", and attribute item "stop condition" 42d
Can be set to "Water valve fully closed and discharge valve fully closed".

If the abstract concept and attribute items of the equipment as described above and the abstract values of the attributes are prepared in advance and this and the above-mentioned equipment configuration information are used, the equipment of the concrete equipment of the target equipment Most of the operating rules can be derived.

That is, for example, in the "sand sander pressure water pump" 44 of the sand setting system, "operation" and "stop" are attribute items "operation", and the attribute item "operation" 4 of "equipment general" 4
It is directly inherited from 1a. Further, as shown in FIG. 3, in the device configuration information of the “sand pump pressure water pump” 31, the attribute item “water absorption source” 31a is “water tank”, and the attribute item “water destination” 31b is “sand settler”. ], The attribute item "discharge valve" 31c corresponds to "sand sander pressure water valve" and "sand sander discharge valve" respectively, and it is described that there is no valve element corresponding to the attribute item "water supply valve" 31d. Therefore, if these pieces of information are used, the attribute operation item “starting condition” 44b can be used as the device operation agreement of the concrete concept “sand pump pressure water pump” from the equipment operation agreement of the abstract concept “pump”. "Close the sandbag discharge valve and close the sandbag pressure water valve", and set the attribute item "stop condition" 44d to "close the sandbag discharge valve and close the sandsand pressure water valve". Each can be derived.

Here, what the designer should do is to call "normal water destination water level" of "normal water source water level and normal water destination water level" which is the attribute item "operating condition" 44c of the abstract concept "pump". It is only necessary to reinterpret the equipment state as the equipment state that "the sand washing machine is operating". This allows
Attribute item "operating condition" of "sand pump pressure water pump" 44c
On the other hand, “normal water level in receiving tank and washing machine in operation” can be set with a slight modification. In addition, such correction work can be easily performed without paying attention to the device configuration of the entire target facility, but by focusing on only relevant partial items in the relationship between the devices, so that the setting omission is obviated. There is an advantage that it can be prevented.

A broken line arrow 45 in FIG. 4 indicates the derivation of a concrete device operation contract from the abstract concept device operation contract. In the present embodiment, the abstract knowledge of device operation is stored in advance in the target knowledge storage device 4, and a specific device operation rule is automatically set using the stored data and the device configuration information of the target facility. It derives with.

However, there are also special and rarely used devices, for which it is difficult to set the device operating rules in a general form, such as the "upper and lower sand settler" 46. For this, the designer manually sets the device operation rules as appropriate.

Similar to FIG. 4, in FIGS. 5 and 6, the solid line represents the relationship between the superordinate concept and the subordinate concept, and the broken line represents the derivation of a concrete device operating rule from the abstract concept device operating rule. .

FIG. 7 shows, as an example of the device state transition rule stored in the device state transition rule storage device 8, the device state transition rule for each device of the sand sedimentation facility. The main elements of the stored data are the name of the target device, and the attribute item “operating state” that describes the set of states that represent the device operation among the possible states of the target device, the position of the device, and the inside of the device. Attribute item "Static state" that expresses static status such as presence / absence of processing object and water level, "Operation status occurrence rule" that expresses occurrence of operation status by operation command, and operation status and static status It consists of the attribute item "Static state occurrence rule" that expresses the occurrence of other static states. Hereinafter, the operating state and the static state are collectively referred to as a device state.

The operation state occurrence rule is composed of an antecedent section that describes an operation command that causes the operation state and a consequent section that describes an equipment state that is caused by the operation command. One operation command is described in the antecedent part. The operation command is a command issued to the device in order to cause the device to perform the device operation defined in the device operation protocol. The consequent part is
Describe one operating state.

The static state occurrence rule is composed of an antecedent part that describes the device state that causes the state transition and an antecedent part that describes the device state that occurs due to this state transition. The antecedent section is
Describes a logical expression consisting of an equipment state or a negation of an equipment state, or a conjunctive (and) or disjunction (or) of an equipment state or a negation of an equipment state. The consequent part describes a set of one or more device states. A static state is mainly described here. For example, like the opening operation of the valve shown in FIG. 9,
If the operation is automatically stopped at the same time when the fully opened state is reached without issuing a stop command, "Opening → Full open,
It will be described by adding "operating", which is the operating state, such as "stopping". As the device state described in the antecedent part of the static state transition rule, not only the device state of the device itself but also the device state of an external device can be set. For example, among the device states forming the antecedent part of the attribute item “static state transition rule” 54d of “NO.1 conveyor” 54, “in operation” is “NO.1 conveyor” itself and “sand settling”. "Washing machine stopped" is a state of equipment outside the "NO. 1 conveyor".

In the operation state generation rule and the static state generation rule, the designation of the timer can be described between the antecedent part and the consequent part. In this case, it means that it takes time from when the condition of the antecedent part that causes the state transition is satisfied to when the device state of the consequent part occurs after the actual state transition occurs. . For example, the timer designation in the equipment state transition rule is used for equipment that does not have a means for detecting the stability of operation in equipment that takes time until a stable operation state is obtained after issuing an operation command. ,
This is provided in order to realize a method of simulating the completion of the transition to the stable state with the elapse of a time interval and determining the timing of controlling the equipment based on the simulation.

Like the occurrence of the device state, it is necessary to describe the disappearance of the device state. However, in the present embodiment, this is not explicitly described as the state transition rule, but the attribute item "mutual exclusion state" is used. We adopted the method of reasoning automatically.
The mutual exclusion state describes a set of two or more sets of device states that cannot be established at the same time.

For example, in the attribute item "operating state occurrence rule" 51c of "general equipment" 51, "run command → run" is
When a "driving command" is issued, it means a transition to the operating state of "driving". Furthermore, the attribute item "mutual exclusion state" 51e has a description of "(driving, stopped)". It is automatically inferred that the operating state "stopping" disappears at the same time that the operating state "operating" occurs, regardless of whether the state of the device before the operation command is issued is "stopping".

In the attribute item "Static state occurrence rule" 52d of "Conveyor" 52d, the rule "running and upstream equipment stopped- (timer * minutes) → no transported object" is defined as the conveyor is "running". And the "upstream equipment" of the conveyor
If is "stopped", it means that the state transits to "no transported object" after "* minutes". Further, since the attribute item “mutually exclusive state” 52e has a description “(with transported goods, without transported goods)”, whether or not the device state “with transported goods” is established before the state transition, It is automatically inferred that this equipment state disappears at the same time that the equipment state of "no cargo" occurs.

In the present embodiment, the method of providing the attribute item of the mutual exclusion state as described above is adopted in order to avoid the complexity of describing the state transition rules one by one for all the device states that disappear with the state transition. The present invention is not limited to this method.

In this embodiment, similarly to the above-mentioned setting of the device operation rules, the device state transition rule is also the abstract device state transition rule stored in advance in the target knowledge storage device 4 and the device configuration of the target facility. Using the information, the control means 1 automatically derives a specific device state rule. As a result, the designer does not have to set all the device state transition rules from scratch. "General equipment" 51, "conveyor" 5 in FIG.
2 and the like indicate device state transition rules as an abstract concept. Solid line 5 connecting "general equipment" to "conveyor", "cleaning machine", etc.
Reference numeral 3 denotes a hierarchical structure of upper-lower concepts, and attributes are inherited from the upper concepts to the lower concepts. For example,
The "conveyor" 52 includes "general equipment" 51, attribute items "operating state" 51a, "operating state occurrence rule" 51c,
All the attribute values of the "mutual exclusion state" 51e are inherited, and the attribute items "static state" 52b, "static state occurrence rule" 52d, and "mutual exclusion state" 52e set in these and the "conveyor" itself. For the above, a value obtained by adding the sum of each attribute value is set as the "conveyor" device state transition rule. In addition, from "conveyor" to "NO.1 conveyor" 5
The dashed arrow 55 to 4 etc. shows derivation of a specific device state transition rule from the abstract device state transition rule. When setting the device state transition rule of "NO.1 conveyor", what the designer should do is to set the timer value that is undecided in the attribute value of the attribute item "static state occurrence rule" 52d of the abstract concept "conveyor". Set value "(Timer * minutes)" to "No. 1 conveyor" attribute item "Static state occurrence rule"
In the attribute value of 54d, only the work of setting "timer 5 minutes" is performed, and all other data is automatically derived from the device configuration information.

In the present embodiment, the device configuration information, the device operation rule, and the device state transition rule described above are stored in the target knowledge storage device 4, the device operation rule storage device 7, and the device state transition rule storage device 8, respectively. It is described that the data is divided and stored, but these may be integrated to configure and store one storage device. The present invention does not specify any storage means for these three types of data. FIG. 8 shows the skip hoist, and FIG. 9 shows the equipment state transition rule for the valve as in FIG.

FIG. 10 shows a device operation regulation and device state transition rule storage device 8 stored in the device operation regulation storage device 7.
7 shows a flow of processing for deriving a device operation procedure in the control device 1 that generates the device operation procedure of the target equipment by combining both data of the device state transition rules stored in.

First, the designer specifies the target state of the equipment to be achieved by control (step 61a). There are naturally many device states to be achieved, but it is not necessary to specify all of them. For example, when generating the operation procedure of the start-up process, among the equipment to be controlled, only the equipment state that realizes the main equipment, of the equipment called the main equipment that has the main function of the equipment, should be selected. Good.

Since the main function of the sand settling facility of the present embodiment is to eject the settling sand, the execution states of "the upstream sand setter is in operation", "the downstream sand setter is in operation", " It should be confirmed as a self-explanatory one among the five device states of "sandbox pressure water pump is operating", "sandbox pressure water valve fully open", and "sandbox discharge valve fully open", and the starting condition of the equipment. You only need to specify the status. The purpose of specifying the initial state is
As will be described later, this is to reduce the subsequent processing and is not essential. In this case, "sand blaster pressure water valve fully closed", "sand blaster discharge valve fully closed", and "sand set skip hoist lower limit" are given.

The input work performed by the designer is only the input of the target state and the initial state, and the subsequent processing is automatically performed. The process to be performed next is to create a directed graph including a node representing a device state or an operation command and an arc representing a state occurrence or various operation conditions, using the device operating convention and the device state transition rule. This directed graph is stored in the device operating procedure storage device 6 as an internal representation of the device operating procedure.

The directed graph has a target state and an initial state given as nodes at the start stage of processing, and has no arc. The target state is marked as unprocessed, and the initial state is marked as processed (steps 62a and 62b).
After that, first, the unprocessed node is searched (step 6).
3) If any, select one arbitrary node (step 64).

If the selected node is an operation command (step 65a), the condition of the operation command is retrieved from the device operation rules (step 65b). That is,
For the "operation command", the logical expressions of the device states describing the "stop condition", the "opening operation condition", and the "raising operation condition" are obtained. If operating conditions exist (step 6)
5c) Of these device states, those that do not exist as nodes in the directed graph are newly registered as unprocessed nodes, and arcs are used to establish a relationship that represents operating conditions between the nodes (step 65d). However, the operation command in which the operation condition is not described may be regarded as always operable, and the process of step 65d is not performed.

If the selected node is in the operating state (step 66a), the condition of the operation command that causes the operating state is determined by the operating state generating rule of the device state transition rule (step 66b). That is, the “operation command”, the “stop command”, the “open command”, and the “up command” are respectively obtained for “operating”, “stopped”, “opening operation”, and “climbing”. If there is an operation command (step 66c), one of these operation commands that does not exist as a node in the directed graph is newly registered as an unprocessed node, and an arc is used to establish a relationship representing a state occurrence between nodes. Perform (step 66d). If there is no operation command, it means that there is a deficiency in the device state transition rule, so the designer is notified of this and the process is stopped (step 66e).

At this time, when the setting of the timer exists in the operating state occurrence rule, the information is also given to the arc.
In addition, particularly for an operation state in which the operation continues such as "during operation" (step 66f), the condition for the operation continuation of the device operation is described as a logical expression of the device state in the device operation agreement. Then, the condition is obtained (step 66g), and the processes of steps 65c and 65d are performed. However, the arc indicating the operating condition is connected to the node in the device state “in operation”.

If the selected node is in the static state (step 67a), the logical expression of the device state representing the condition that causes the static state is obtained by the static state occurrence rule of the device state transition rule (step 67b). ). If an occurrence condition exists (step 67c), one of these device states that does not exist as a node in the directed graph is newly registered as an unprocessed node, and a relation indicating the occurrence of a state is created between the nodes by arcs ( Step 67d).
At this time, if the timer setting exists in the operating state occurrence rule, the arc also has that information. If a condition that causes a static state is not described, this state is considered to be uncontrollable in the target equipment, and is registered as an out-of-equipment condition in this node (step 67).
e).

If the node has steps 65a, 66a,
67a, that is, if it is neither an operation command, a motion command, nor a static command, there is a defect in the input target state, device operation protocol, or device state transition rule, so design that fact. The person is notified and the processing is stopped (step 68).

A node which has been subjected to the processing of steps 65a to 65d, steps 66a to 66g, or steps 67a to 67e is marked as processed (step 69).

The above series of processing is repeated, and if there is no unprocessed node in the directed graph, the processing ends. FIG. 11 shows an example of the directed graph generated by performing this process on the sand settling facility using the device operating rules and the device state transition rules shown in FIGS. 4 to 6 and 5 to 9. . The "sand sander pressure water pump operation command" 71a, the "sand sander pressure water valve opening command" 71b, etc. of FIG.
a, "during sand washing machine operation" 72b, etc., are nodes that represent operating states, "sand sander pressure water valve fully open" 73a, "sand sand washing machine specified water level" 73b, etc., are nodes that show static states. Further, solid line arrows 74a and the like are arcs representing various operating conditions,
The node at the start point of the arc represents the operation condition, and the node at the end point represents the command operation. Dashed arrows 75a and the like are arcs representing state occurrences, and the node at the start point of the arc represents the condition causing the state occurrence, and the node at the end point represents the device state. A timer command 76 is attached to the arc representing the state occurrence according to the device state transition rule. When a plurality of arc end points of the same kind are connected to one node, the operation condition or state occurrence condition of this node indicates that it is a conjunction or disjunction of a plurality of nodes at the arc start point. The relation between the arcs 74b and 74c and the relation between 75b and 75c in the figure are all conjunctions (and).

In generating the directed graph of FIG. 7,
"During operation of upstream sand setter" and "During operation of downstream sand setter" 72c, "During operation of sand sander pressure water pump" 72a,
"Sandlift pressure water valve fully open" 73c was given as the target state.

In addition, as a condition in which it is obvious that the condition is satisfied at the time of starting the equipment, or as an initial state which should be confirmed as a starting condition for the equipment, "fully sand sand pressure water closed" 7
7a, “sand closer discharge valve fully closed” 77b, and “sand settling skip hoist lower limit” 77c are set, but these target states and initial states are regarded as processed nodes from the beginning in the directed graph generation processing. That is, for these device states, the process of searching for the occurrence condition is omitted. As a result, it is possible to prevent deriving an unnecessary operation procedure for causing the initial state.

The node "water tank water level normal" 78 is one whose state occurrence rule could not be found in step 67b, because this static state is not controllable by the equipment in the sedimentation treatment facility. Is. Therefore, in step 67e, this state is registered as an out-of-equipment condition.

The directed graph generated by the above-described processing is a description expressing the device operation procedure of the entire facility. In other words, since this directed graph includes all the information that regulates the operating procedure of the device, all the operating conditions are specified by sequentially issuing the operating command to each device according to the operating condition and the direction of the arc that represents the state occurrence. It is possible to obtain a device operation procedure that is satisfactory and sequentially produces correct states.
In this way, by combining the device operation rules and device state transition rules set by focusing on the individual devices of the equipment and their partial relationships, the overall control of the target equipment consisting of multiple devices can be achieved. The operation procedure to be performed is generated. This is because the device operation rules and device state transition rules of the individual devices are set by including the device states of external devices related to the device as conditions.

It is possible to directly generate a control execution program from the equipment operation procedure generated in the above-mentioned directed graph format and stored in the equipment operation procedure storage device 6, but this is converted into a control specification in a flow chart format. Means can also be realized.

FIG. 12 shows the equipment operation procedure of the starting process of the sedimentation treatment facility, which is converted from the directed graph of FIG. 11 into the control specification in the form of a flow chart. Various conversion means and rules can be considered according to the format of the control specification. For example, when converting to the format called the sequence block diagram shown in FIG. 12, the following conversion rule is used. (Rule 1) A node for confirming that the starting condition is satisfied is created by combining the above-mentioned initial state and the equipment state which are the outside-equipment conditions as a starting condition, and each node indicating the initial state and the outside-equipment condition and the starting point Erase the arc.
Furthermore, all the nodes in the directed graph that are not connected to the end points of any arcs are selected, and arcs are provided from the nodes that confirm the satisfaction of the starting conditions to those nodes. (Rule 2) The operation state is combined with the operation command that causes the operation state into one node, and is represented by the operation command.
At this time, the arc representing the state occurrence between the two is erased, and the joining relationship of the other arcs is maintained. (Rule 3) If an arc has a timer specified, the node at the end point of the arc is deleted and a node waiting for the timer is made instead. At this time, the arc joining relation of the directed graph is maintained. (Rule 4) The direction of the arc is the flow of processing in the sequence block diagram. An arc that merges from multiple nodes into one node becomes a branch point in the sequence block diagram. However, if there are multiple routes that branch from one node and then merge again into one node, if there is an arc that starts at the branch point and ends at the merge point, the arc is to erase.

In FIG. 12, step 81 is a step corresponding to the starting condition confirmation node provided by (Rule 1),
Steps 82a, 82b, etc. are the steps corresponding to the nodes in which the operation states are grouped into one and the operation command is represented by the operation command according to (Rule 2), Step 83a,
83b and the like are steps corresponding to nodes in the static state of the device, and steps 84a and 84b are steps waiting for the timer provided by (Rule 3). Also, the branch point 85a
And 85b, and confluence points 86a and 86b are (rule 4)
Since the arcs 74d and 74e in FIG. 7 are similarly deleted by (Rule 4), branching / merging does not occur at these points.

According to the present invention, the control of the conventional method in which the flow chart format control specification is input is performed by the control device 1 performing the conversion into the flow chart format control specification using the conversion rule described above as an example. It can be used by connecting to the execution program generation device. Further, the flow of the device operation procedure can be confirmed by presenting the control specification in the converted flowchart format to the designer.

Note that the present invention is not limited to the above-described embodiments, and for example, data such as device configuration information, device operating rules, device state transition rules, etc. can be input into data, a target state in the process of generating a device operating procedure, and an initial state. The state input method, the presence / absence of a dialog during various processes, and the method can be implemented without limitation.

[0065]

As described above, according to the present invention,
Since the operation procedure of the equipment is automatically generated from the equipment configuration information of the target equipment and the rules and rules relating to the operation and state of each equipment that are automatically derived from it, the operation expression defined in the flowchart format is created. It eliminates the need for description, reduces the program design process, and significantly improves productivity.

Further, since the designer does not need to have a comprehensive understanding of the entire equipment and pay attention to the relationships between individual devices or partial devices, even a skilled person can easily obtain a high-quality control program. Can be designed.

Further, even when the target equipment is changed or the past design case is desired to be reused, the equipment configuration of the target equipment used in the past can be used without modifying the equipment operation procedure in the flowchart format created in the past. Since the equipment operation procedure and the control execution program of the new equipment can be generated only by directly correcting the information according to the change of the equipment, the reuse efficiency is improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a system configuration of a control execution program generation method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining a target facility of an application example of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing an example of device configuration information that is part of the subject knowledge of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is a diagram showing an example of a device operation rule for general devices of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a diagram showing an example of a device operation rule relating to the valve of the present invention.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing an example of a device operation rule relating to the skip hoist of the present invention.

FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an example of a device state transition rule for general devices of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a diagram showing an example of a device state transition rule regarding the valve of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a diagram showing an example of a device state transition rule regarding a skip hoist of the present invention.

FIG. 10 is a diagram showing a flow of processing for generating a device operation procedure of the present invention.

FIG. 11 is a diagram of a directed graph showing an example of an internal representation of a device operation procedure of the present invention.

FIG. 12 is a flow chart showing an example of generated control specifications of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 control device 2 bus 3 program storage device 4 target knowledge storage device 5 program development knowledge storage device 6 equipment operation procedure storage device 7 equipment operation rule storage device 8 equipment state transition rule storage device 9 display interface 10 input device interface 11 programmable controller interface 12 display device 13 input device 14 programmable controller 15 control target

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A constraint of an individual device to be controlled is stored as a device operating rule represented by the states of this device and other devices, and a rule for causing the state of each individual device to be controlled is defined by this device and It is stored as a device state transition rule expressed by a logical expression of the state of another device, and the operation and state of the device that causes the state of the device specified by the designer are searched from the device state transition rule, and the designer A method for generating a control execution program, characterized in that a condition that restricts an operation of a device that causes a state of a specified device is searched from the device operation agreement, and a procedure of an operation of the device of the controlled equipment is generated. 2. The individual devices to be controlled and the configurations between these devices are stored as configuration information, and the configuration information is associated with preset device operation rules and device state transition rules for general devices. The method for generating a control execution program according to claim 1, characterized in that the device operating rules and the device state transition rules of the individual devices are generated.