Dual-Level Fault-Tolerant FPGA-Based Flexible Manufacturing System

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that features a dual-level fault tolerance mechanism at both the workcell and system levels to enhance reliability. The workcell controller was implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Reconfigurable duplication w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Gehad I. Alkady, Ramez M. Daoud, Hassanein H. Amer, Yves Sallez, Hani F. Ragai
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Designs
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2411-9660/9/3/56
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This paper proposes a fault-tolerant flexible manufacturing system (FMS) that features a dual-level fault tolerance mechanism at both the workcell and system levels to enhance reliability. The workcell controller was implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Reconfigurable duplication was used as the first level of fault tolerance at the workcell level. It was shown how to detect and recover from FPGA faults such as Single Event Upsets (SEUs), hard faults, and Single Event Functional Interrupts (SEFIs). The prototype of the workcell controller was successfully implemented using two Zybo Z7-20 AMD boards and an Arduino DUE. Petri Nets were used to prove that controller reliability increased by 346% after 1440 operational hours. The second level of fault tolerance was at the FMS level; the Supervisor (SUP) took over the responsibilities of any malfunctioning workcell controller. Riverbed software was used to prove that the system successfully met the end-to-end delay requirements. Finally, Matlab showed that there is a further increase in performability.
ISSN:2411-9660