Patent ID: 7634320

Claim:
An interlock control apparatus, comprising: a plurality of control modules, each of which controls driving of at least one piece of equipment and includes a slave switching apparatus; and a master switching apparatus connected to said plurality of control modules, wherein each of said slave switching apparatuses comprises: a multiplexing apparatus that produces a multiplexed signal by multiplexing state detecting signals, each of which indicates any of a plurality of states of a piece of the equipment whose driving is controlled by a corresponding control module; a storage apparatus that stores the multiplexed signal; a reading apparatus that reads out the stored multiplexed signal; a separating apparatus that separates the read out multiplexed signal so as to produce a plurality of separated signals; and a transmitting apparatus that transmits predetermined separated signals out of the separated signals to said master switching apparatus, wherein said master switching apparatus transmits at least one signal of the predetermined separated signals from another one of said slave switching apparatuses to a predetermined one of said slave switching apparatuses, wherein a part of the plurality of separated signals includes the at least one signal transmitted through said master switching apparatus from an other one of said slave switching apparatuses, and wherein the predetermined one of said slave switching apparatuses is provided with at least one controller that controls driving of a corresponding piece of the equipment based on the plurality of separated signals.