A linear drive system provides a combination of distributed control to increase the number of movers which may be supported in the system and centralized control to reduce the separation distance between movers by grouping movers together and placing a reference mover of the group under central control with remaining movers of the group under distributed control. In addition, in precise working locations, or synchronization zones, each of the movers can be temporarily placed under central control to further reduce the separation distance and allow improved coordination with industrial processes or machines in the system.

A master unit that controls a master axis and a slave unit that controls a slave axis are connected via a communication path to construct a numerical control system. The slave unit acquires a reception time of synchronization information received from the master unit and records a history of the reception time of the synchronization information. Then, when retransmission of transfer of the synchronization information is detected, the slave unit corrects the reception time of the synchronization information based on history data of the reception time and corrects asynchronous position of the slave axis based on a corrected reception time.

A machining time prediction system divides a machining program to be executed by a machine tool into a plurality of sections, transfers the divided machining programs to arithmetic unit to calculate machining times and integrates the calculated machining times. Thus, when hardware resources of an arithmetic processing apparatus for calculating a machining time are lacking, it is possible to perform necessary calculations in cooperation with the other management apparatus or machine tool or the like, and thereby shorten a processing time.

A configurable, connectorized system for providing RTU monitoring of field digital and analog parameters and transmitting data to the Central PLC system dramatically reduces the number of wire connections that must be made to connect sensors and actuators to a PLC system. The system is also extremely rugged and safe to be located in a hazardous environment.

A controller that can perform high-precision synchronous control even when the speed of a master axis changes and a machine learning device are provided. The controller includes the machine learning device that learns the future predicted position of the master axis with respect to the operation state of the master axis, and the machine learning device includes a state observing section that observes, as a state variable indicating the current state of an environment, master axis predicted position data indicating the future predicted position of the master axis and master axis operation state data indicating the operation state of the master axis, a judgment data acquiring section that acquires judgment data indicating the properness judgment result of a synchronization error of a slave axis, and a learning section that learns the future predicted position of the master axis by correlating the future predicted position of the master axis with the master axis operation state data by using the state variable and the judgment data.

A master unit that controls a master axis and a slave unit that controls a slave axis are connected via a communication path to construct a numerical control system. The slave unit acquires a reception time of synchronization information received from the master unit and records a history of the reception time of the synchronization information. Then, when retransmission of transfer of the synchronization information is detected, the slave unit corrects the reception time of the synchronization information based on history data of the reception time and corrects asynchronous position of the slave axis based on a corrected reception time.