Design of a universal robot controller

Abstract

The paper deals with a general purpose industrial robot controller. Due to the modules of the system is universal. It can be connected to several types of robots, even to CNC, turningmill or other machines. It was connected to an Adept Scara robot successfully,experimental results will be presented. The basic element of the system is the EMC2 open source robot controller program, which runs in a realtime linux kernel. A PCI card creates the high speed connection between the EMC2 and the machine. DC servo amplifier, digital input and output module, teach pendant, and power electronics designed for the system. The system is RT-middleware (Robotics Technology Middleware)compatible. The RT-middleware is a common robot control platform, which can easily connect different robots to the same network for a common work.

STEP-NC-based machining architecture applied to industrial robots

“…Industrial robots are mostly equipped with controllers with specific languages, which hinders the large adoption of this technology on the shop floor [2,[19][20][21]. An interesting alternative to this problem is the development of an open CNC controller like LinuxCNC, which is a controller with G/M code interpreter based on the RS 274 standard [22].…”

“…An interesting alternative to this problem is the development of an open CNC controller like LinuxCNC, which is a controller with G/M code interpreter based on the RS 274 standard [22]. Some researches have already assessed the applicability of the integration of such solution to industrial robots [2,4,[19][20][21], and others have implemented a STEP-NC solution on a machine tool with LinuxCNC controller [2,4,23,24]. The development of a STEP-NC-compliant LinuxCNC controller for industrial manipulator robot presents the advantages of being free and compatible with STEP-NC.…”

Controlador CNC para modernización del proceso de fresado a bajo costo: caso con fresadora Supernova

“…Peña et al [4], en el año 2010, en la Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia-Bogotá, desarrollaron un torno CNC de arquitectura abierta con un conversor de RS-232 a TTL con un microcontrolador PIC 16F877A. Posteriormente, en al año 2011, Kovács et al [5] proponen una arquitectura electrónica como hardware universal para controlar robots, incluso máquinas CNC, y para ello integra tarjeta Mesa Electronics 5i20 PCI con una tarjeta Vital System de 8 ejes con PCI board que permitían comunicación con los actuadores en lenguaje EMC2. En el mismo año, en México, es reportada la restauración de un torno CNC marca EMCO, cuyo hardware electrónico incluyó la integración de una tarjeta tipo PWM (Pulse Width Modulation) con un MOFSET de canal N para control de velocidad de giro del husillo, junto con un computador personal con sistema operativo LINUX para ejecución del EMC [6].…”