Copyright © IFAC Low Cost Automation,

Shenyang, P.R. China, 1998

THE COMPUTER CONTROL SYSTEM OF

A WALL-CLIMBING INSPECTION ROBOT'

Feng Yong, Li Tao, Xu Dianguo, and Wang Yan

Department of Electrical Engineering, Harbin institute of Technology

Harbin 150001 , P.R. China, E-Mail: yfeng@!Zope. hit. edu.cn

Abstract: This paper describes a master-slave computer control system of the wall-climbing
inspection robot. The optical fibers are used in the system to realize the long-distance
communication between the master computer and the slave computer. the data signal. audio
signal and video signal are mixed together to be transmitted. The communication protocol
between the master computer and the slave computer is designed to transmit the data
synchronously and correct any communication error automatically. Copyright © 1998 1FAC

Keywords: Computer control: Control system: Manipulators; Robot control: Robots.

l. INTRODUCTION canisters in oil and chemistry field .

Wall-climbing inspection robots are mainly used in
inspecting outlook of walls of the wasted liquid
canister in radioactive wasted liquid workshop. The
robots can find the hidden troubles caused by
corroding revelation of radioactive wasted liquid,
assuring the safety of the circumstance. This kind of
robots can also be widely used in cleaning of
skyscrapers. inspection, rust elimination. painting of
The diagram of the wall-climbing inspection robot
system is shown in Fig.I . The system consists of
some subsystems, such as a wall-climbing robot, a
carrying cart, a manipulator, a humper, a remote
control station, and a diagnose equipment. The
movement of the wall-climbing robot can be
controlled by operators with camera 1. The diagnose
equipment placed in the wall-climbing robot adopts

. This work is supported by 863 high tecnology project of China

83

STD Bus
Computer
Fig. 1 The diagram of the wall-climbing inspection robot system
ultrasonic to detect flaws and thickness of the wasted
liquid canister. The carrying cart is used to carry the
wall-climbing robot from remote place to the vicinity
of the wall to be inspected with the camera 2 and 3.
The manipulator is used to carry the wall-climbing
robot from the carrying cart to the wall or take off the
robot from the wall with the camera 2 and 3. The
humper is used to avoid the wall-climbing robot
dropping from the wall accidentally. Operators can
control every subsystem in the remote control station
with the video system (the camera 1,2, and 3).
2. MAIN SPECIFIC AnONS OF TIlE COMPUTER
CONTROL SYSTEM
The main specifications of the computer control
system of the robot can be described as follow
(1 )The control of the robot is line-remote.
(2)The structure of the computer control system is
two lever. the master computer is placed in the
remote control station and the slave computer is
placed in the carrying cart.
(3 )The master computer can coordinate and manage
the whole system.
(4 )The master computer of the system can make
communication with the slave computer through
serial ports and optical fibers, to transmit commands,
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Video
Video
I---+---i PC Bus Contol
1--+---iC omputer Pannel
date and state information. The baud rate of the selial
communication is 9600DB, the transmitting distance
is more than 100 meters.
(5)The system has the function of self diagnose and
fault alarm.
(6)The pull-down menu in the master computer is
realized in Chinese.
(7)There are six operating modes: send robot, fetch
robot, manual check, automatic check, alone operate,
self diagnose.
(8)The logical protection is adopted in the operating
buttons
3. HARDWARE OF TIlE COMPUTER CONTROL
SYSTEM
The computer control system is essential in the wall-
climbing inspection robot system, its function is to
coordinate and control all subsystems for inspecting
the outlook of the wasted liquid canister walls . At
the same time , the computer control system can also
monitor and display all the states of the system in the
remote control station for operators.
The structure of the computer control system is two-
leveL the master computer is placed in the remote
control station, and the slave computer is placed on
the carrying cart. The master computer monitors and
controls the wall-climbing robot, the carrying cart,
the manipulator, the humper, and the diagnose
equipment through sending a serial of commands to
the slave computer and receiving all the system state
information from the slave computer. Meanwhile,
the slave computer controls and monitors all the
systems directly according to the commands from the
master computer.
The computer control system of the wall-climbing
robot is shown in Fig.2. The two-level computer
structure is adopted in the system. The master
computer is a PC bus computer. the slave computer is
a STD bus computer. The master computer
communicates with the slave computer through the
optical fibers. The master computer transmits
;Master Comouter Control System:
I
Optic al T emUnal
'~'~Fi/
~. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -'
Fig.2 The computer system ofthe wall-climbing robot
Fig.3 The transmission of the audio and video signals
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commands to the slave computer and receives the
system state information from the slave computer.
Three video signals, one audio signal, and two data
signals in the system must be transmitted using the
optical fibers simultaneously. The communication
between two computers is realized through RS232C
serial port. There are six optical fibers in the optical
line, every optical fiber can transmit two channel
different signals. Fig.3 shows the transmission of one
channel of video signal and one channel of audio
signal using one fiber; Fig.4 shows the transmission
of one channel of video signal and one channel of
data signal using one fiber: and Fig.S shows the
transmission of one channel of audio signal and one
channel of data signal using one fiber: the other two
optical fibers are reserved for future .
Wall-climbing
~--+I robot
;/ \ Manuplator
Vision
System
Carrying
Cart
I
I
I
Hump er
Diagnose
RS232C Equipment
 Fig.4 The transmission of the video and data signal
Fig.5 The transmission of the audio and data signal
4 THE COMMUNICATION BETWEEN MASTER
CONWUTERANDSLAVECONWUTER
In order to realize the long-distance communication
between the master computer and the slave computer
of the wall-climbing robot control system, the optical
fibers can be used to link the master computer and
the slave computer. The master computer and the
slave computer communicate each other through the
RS-232C serial port, the speed of signal transmission
is the baud rate 9600DB.
The communication between the master computer
and the slave computer is very important to the
climbing robot control system. There must be two
problems to be considered in the design of the
computer control system. Since the control of the
wall-climbing robot system is real-time, the first
problem is speed of signal transmission between the
two computers: the second is reliability of the system,
the commands from the master computer and the
state information from the slave computer are
required absolute exactness. if some errors occur in
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the data communication between the two computers,
the master computer and the slave computer can
correct them automatically.
The idea of designing communication between the
master computer and the slave computer is that the
communication is controlled by the master computer.
The slave computer makes communication according
to the command from the master computer. The
master computer receives the state information of the
wall-climbing robot system from the slave computer.
The message exchange between the master computer
and the slave computer in the two directions is
processed as the following protocol:
<ACK> <LN> <f\1ESSAGE> <LRC> (1)
where ACK=60h describes the transmission of the
old message has ended and the transmission of new
message has started: LN(l byte) shows the length of
the useful message: :MESSAGE indicates the
commands from the master or the response from the
slave computer: LRC( I byte )is used to certify the
message transmitted, the algorithm of LRC can be
described as follow
LRC=ACKEElLNEEl(1v1ESSAGE I
EElMESSAGE 2••••••EEl MESSAGE IN) (2)
where the symbol EEl indicates XOR logic operation;
MESSAGE i indicates the ith byte of the message.
The computer sending message must compute LRC
as Eq.(2). then send them to another computer
according to Eq.(l) through the RS232C serial port.
Each of the two computers receiving the message
which is formed as Eq.(l) will compute LRC
according to Eq.(2), then compares the computed
LRC with the received LRC. If the two LRC are same,
the logical certification is successful. But if the two
LRC are different the certification is faiL which
shows the serial message received can not be used.
The computer receiving the message must send back
an empty message to another computer. If the
computer receiving message does not receive the
additional message LRC, it will also send back the
same empty message to another computer. The empty
message (NACK) to be transmitted is formed as
follow
<EOh> <OOh> <EOh> (3)
If the computer receiving message finds any error in
communication, the computer can repeat sending an
unsuccessful message (3), but the computer must set
the limitation of sending times to avoid circulating.
the computer can also send another different message
to the computer sending message under the same
condition above. Accordingly, if the computer
sending message receives an empty message
(NACK). the computer will repeat the previous
message.
After design of the communication protocol between
the master computer and the slave computer
according to the above idea, the specification of the
wall-climbing inspection robot system can be
satisfied, the data communication synchronism of the
two computers can be realized automatically. If any
error occurs in the communication. the master
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computer and the slave computer can correct the
error automatically, so that the slave computer can
avoid operating the wrong commands from the
master computer and the master computer can avoid
getting the wrong state information from the slave
computer.
5 SOFTWARE DESIGN
The master computer control system software is
programmed using C++ program language, the
software consists of six function modules: send robot,
fetch robot, manual check, automatic check, alone
operate, diagnose. The block diagram of the software
in the master computer is shown in Fig.6. The
program diagram shown in Fig.6 only lists the two-
level menu of the sole operate function, the other five
function modules in the software are omitted in the
paper.
According to the requirements of the robot system,
the Chinese pull-down menu is adopted in the
software. The system adopts the Chinese menu in
English DOS. In order to save time for real-time
control. the paper builds a Chinese character font
base in the hard disk. When the control system
begins to run, the font base is read into RAM, the
Chinese font module can be achieved only by access
to RAM, and the different type Chinese characters
can be displayed together. Graphics and window
techniques are adopted in the system software to
make the screen simply and clear.
The keyboard interrupt and timing interrupt are
adopted in the system software to manage all tasks of
the control system conveniently. The timing interrupt
control uses the 8th interrupt in the master computer.
the sample time is set to be 50 ms. The keyboard
interrupt control uses the 9th interrupt in the master
computer. The main and the subroutine programs
setting and using these two interrupts in the master
computer are shown as follow
void interrupt timerO:
void interrupt keyO:
 Function
Select

• + +
. + + ..
Send Fetch Manual Automatic Alone Self
Robot f-+ Robot H
Check
..... Check r+ Operate
-i
Diagnose
..
Function
Select

... 1
+ ~ + + +
Manuplator --i
Vision
System l-i Diagnose ~ Hump er -. Robot H Others

Fig.6 The block diagram of the software in the master computer

mainO CONCLUSION

union bw{int i; The paper describes the wall-climbing inspection

unsigned char ch[1);}tbw robot computer control system. The system adopts
two-level computer structure. The optical fiber is
outportb(Ox43 ;Ox36); used in the system to realize the long-distance
tbw.i=59625: communication between the master computer and the
outportb(Ox40. twb.ch[O) ); slave computer, the data signal, audio signal and
outportb(Ox41 , twb.ch[1) ); video signal are mixed together to be transmitted, so
setvector(8, timer); two different signal can be transmitted on one optical
setvector(9, key); fiber. The design of communication protocol between
outportb(0x21 ,Oxfc); the master computer and slave computer can make
the communication synchronous, and can correct any
} error automatically.

void interrupt timerO

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outportb(0x20, 0x20); . and control. John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
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(1988). The development of an intelligent
void interrupt keyO nuclear maintenance robot IEEE Inter. Con! on
Robotics and Automation, Vo1.2 ., pp621-623
Kweon I. S., Kuno Y. , et a1.(1992) . Behavior-based
enableO; intelligent robot in dynamic indoor environment.
outportb(0x20, 0x20); Proc. of IEEEIRSJ, Inter. Con! on Intelligent,
} Robots and Systems. pp. 1339-1346.

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