Experimental industrial robotics

Abstract

Robot control systems and other manufacturing equipment are traditionally closed. This circumstance has hampered system integration of manipulators, sensors and other equipment and such system integration has often been made at an unsuitably high hierarchical level. The purpose of the present project is to show how to organize open robot control systems and to verify these ideas by means of experimental verification. As a part of this research, we have developed an experimental robot control system. The system is built around industrially available robots that have been reconfigured for experimental purposes. The developed specific robot interfaces and the integration of the robots into a complete system forms a unique environment for testing and development of algorithms for improvement of performance, programming and autonomous operation.