Multiple control-point control system and method of use

摘要

A control system for rapid fault tolerant control of a multiple control-point apparatus is disclosed. The system comprises: a host subsystem acting as a user interface; a plurality of control-point actuators; a master controller subsystem which receives initialization data from the host terminal and which generates behavior commands; and a control-point controller subsystem which receives behavior commands from the master controller subsystem and generates control-point actuator commands. The control-point controller subsystem is made fault tolerant by using a plurality of control-point processors connected to control-point interfaces through a programmable crossbar switch such that if any of the control-point processors develops a fault, the crossbar switch will connect one of the other control-point processors to the control-point interface previously serviced by the faulty control-point processors. The master controller subsystem can be made fault tolerant by including an odd number of at least three master processors in the master controller subsystem such that each master processor runs a common control program in parallel with every other master processor and the master control output for each master processor is compared with the other master control outputs to generate the output common to the majority of master processors as the majority control output.