An Object Oriented Intelligent Control Architecture

A new intelligent control system architecture is proposed which uses an object-oriented paradigm to decompose an intelligent control problem into objects representing sensors, a sensor manager, and a conroller. Each object is instantiated from a class, and possesses data, functions, and knowledge inherited through a class structure. In addition, each object updates its own specific state-related data and facts during system operation. The benefits of this new independent-intelligence/ object-oriented architecture include flexibility of system configuration, efficient construction of specific control application software using generic object classes for the components, and robustness. An example is described for a vision based robotic weld seam tracking system currently under development.