Towards Re-orchestration of Real-Time Component Systems in Robotics

Abstract

Over the last decade, there has been a trend towards component-based systems in robotics software engineering. Although the aspect of real-time is important to control manipulators with high velocities or forces, it has often been neglected. In this paper, we present a runtime environment for real-time component systems in robotics. It allows for a generic specification of computation tasks and employs a flexible, rule-based mechanism for composing and coordinating multiple components. Moreover, the runtime environment is capable of seamlessly re-orchestrating the composition of realtime components at run-time to adapt to new tasks-even when the robotics system is moving with high speed. For illustration, two examples are given. Each of the five concerns (5Cs) is used to describe the runtime environment and its concepts and ideas for building

Real-time capable OPC-UA Programs over TSN for distributed industrial control

“…When we consider control applications based on the orchestration of skills, we have a distributed real-time component system [15]. Skills can be implemented as long-running methods which must be started and stopped in a synchronized and time-sensitive manner while the control application is running.…”

RealCaPP: Real-time capable Plug & Produce communication platform with OPC UA over TSN for distributed industrial robot control

“…This discrepancy must be addressed to realise industrial grade Plug & Produce systems. Hence, it must be possible to reconfigure the real-time production system at runtime [10]. In terms of TSN, new devices and their network interfaces must be configured properly and real-time communication channels must be added or removed appropriately.…”