Building an object-oriented environment for distributed manufacturing software

A description is presented of the characteristics of a programming environment for distributed manufacturing software based on an open workcell architecture. The authors consider C++ as a base language for this environment and describe extensions to the language which would make it more suitable for distributed systems integration. The main problem stems from insistence on static (compile-time) binding and type-checking and the necessity of introducing dynamic binding for convenient encapsulation of concepts such as remote procedure call.