A framework for control architectures

The development of architectures for control systems has been an active area of research for at least twenty years. This research has produced many different architectures which use different terminologies and address different issues. In order to analyse existing architectures and to determine issues that must be addressed in defining a new one, a common terminology for discussing architectures and a framework for organizing information about architectures is needed. Based upon an examination of many control architectures in the areas of computer integrated manufacturing and robotics, the authors propose a terminology for discussing control architectures and a framework for constructing control architectures. The authors have used the terminology and framework to develop a set of issues which need to be addressed when constructing a control architecture. These issues have been used to compare two architectures developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This paper presents the terminology, the framework, and issues related to constructing an architecture using the framework.