Robotic cell work-flow management through an IEC 61499-ROS architecture

Abstract

Nowadays industrial production is undergoing a continuous increase in flexibility requirements and production facilities have to cope with products diversities, high levels of uncertainties and frequent changes in production cycles. Robotic cells are an interesting solution for achieving the high level of flexibility essential for small batch production and customization, but they have to deal with an additional increase in complexity due to human interaction. An intuitive framework for fast application development and easy robot integration is then a key factor for achieving all the aforementioned specifications. In this paper, we propose the adoption of the IEC 61499 for workflow management and robotic task modelling. The event-driven Function Block model provides a natural way of describing the flow of operations by means of event connection between subsequent tasks and a convenient channel for human interaction. Low level robotic task execution has been implemented using the ROS framework and a specialized service interface communication channel which connects the closed loop control layer with the workflow management. A practical application scenario tested on a demanufacturing pilot plant has demonstrated the applicability of this approach with an increase in component reusability and a significant reduction in programming time.