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BNCEP
USAD
2006
'OPENARCHITECTURE ROBOTCONTROLLERSANDWorkcellIntegration'
Ritesh Bhusari
 
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New PC based open architecture robot controllers and the demand for improved Man Machine Interfaces (MMI), increased flexibility, and lower purchasing and operating costs are forcing a paradigm shift in the design,integration, and servicing of robotic workcells. Improved MMI can reduce theoperator's programming time, shorten system error diagnostic times, and allow for common user interfaces across many different systems. Lower purchasing andoperating costs can be achieved along with increased flexibility by using standardhardware and software components. The use of standard PC components in arobot controller opens the door for third party venders and allows for new workcelldevelopment and customization opportunities. Robot and controller manufactureshave already begun to respond to customer demands by developing "openarchitecture" controllers. Note the word "open" is not synonymous with the word"universal." The phrase "open controller" refers to a controller that is based onknown or published specifications whereas; a "universal" controller refers to acontroller that can be used with several different robot arms. The degree of "openness" may vary from one manufacture to the next. One definition of an openarchitecture controller is "a controller with standard hardware and operatingsystem with open interface specifications." The PC is an example of an existingopen architecture system that is based on the original IBM® personal computer.The PC hardware architecture is now a standard piece of computing hardwarethat can be found in commercial products and industrial machine tools. TheMicrosoft Windows® software is a standard operating system used in millions of PC systems. Robot controller systems built around the PC hardware and theWindows® operating system have numerous advantages over closed proprietaryrobot control systems.
 
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Proprietary (i.e., closed) robot controllers have improved over the years,but still have many disadvantages relative to an open architecture controller. Mostproprietary systems are often viewed as "islands of automation" because of the"closed" nature of these machines and their very limited compatibility andconnectivity with other systems. Some controllers use one or more commonCPU's (i.e., Intel 8088, Motorola 68000) in each system, but the rest of thehardware and interface specifications are proprietary. Hardware performanceupgrades (i.e., CPU's, memory, etc.) are limited if even possible. Proprietarysystem I/O peripherals and interface configurations are also used, whichcompound the compatibility and connectivity problems of closed systems. For example, one controller used a standard floppy drive and diskette. However, itwrote the data to the disk using a proprietary format (i.e., did not use the standardMS-DOS format), which prevented the operator from reading the data usingstandard software on an office PC. Given these and numerous other limitations of proprietary robot controllers, the request for open architecture control systems hasbeen made by end-users such as the "big three" automotive companies as well assystem integrators.In the remainder of this paper, the integration of PC based openarchitecture robot controllers and the Windows® operating system with roboticworkcells is presented. In Section 2.0, a comparison between open architecturecontrollers and propriety controller systems is provided. Outlined in Section 3.0 isan overview of new workcell development and servicing opportunities for thesystem integrator of open architecture controllers.
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