Reconfigurable Mechatronic Robotic Plug-and-Play Controller

In today’s manufacturing community, flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) are becoming important. There is a global trend towards flexible manufacturing systems with an increasing number of countries competing for a share of the world market. FMS are increasingly required for companies to meet the demand for high quality, reasonably priced products. FMS allow a manufacturer to quickly change processes or operations to produce any product, at any time, while striving to keep the processes economical. To remain competitive companies should be replacing or upgrading old, obsolete methods, processes, and systems with the latest advances in manufacturing technology. This competition within the manufacturing industry has led to a focus on producing high quality parts quickly and accurately. The quality of products, along with the increased productivity necessary to compete globally, has led more and more manufacturers to introduce advanced manufacturing technologies in their factories. In order for these advanced manufacturing technologies to be accepted by manufacturing companies, they need to be able to implement the new technologies and their processes as quickly as possible so as to keep manufacturing down-time to a minimum. This allows the manufacturer to respond quickly and with increased flexibility to market needs. Such is the need for FMS. Important to FMS is computer-based technology. Since the advent of the microprocessor, computer-based technologies have made it possible to improve productivity, reduce manufacturing costs, and produce better, uniform quality goods. Manufacturers who introduce computer-based technologies into their manufacturing environment are able to increase their productivity and in turn increase their market share. Many manufacturers have made the change over to either completely or partially automated systems and processes. The development of the microprocessor has seen the use of robots increase in many applications. FMS generally consist of a number of automated machine tools and materials-handling systems. These systems are flexible enough to reconfigure their elements or processes in order to produce a product. Robotics finds itself to be an important part of FMS due to the flexibility of robotic arms (Krar & Arthur, 2003). The past few decades has seen a large increase of automated machines in the manufacturing environment. It is therefore important to know exactly what a robot is, and what makes it different from other automated machines, as robots come in many shapes and sizes. The word robot comes from the Czech word “robota” meaning work, servitude