A Distributed Operating Environment for Integrated Robotic Systems

Sensor-based control of multiple robot systems require a large number of sensors and robotic motor units to be integrated. As the demand for agile manufacturing cells to become more adaptable and reconfigurable in terms of both hardware and software increases, data management and coordination of the numerous connected units become difficult. To attain this flexibility or agility, an operating system environment tailored for complex robot systems has been investigated and developed, based on the lowcost/high performance computing hardware made available by the personal computer industry. This paper begins with the description of the system architecture of our environment which promotes extensive integration, reconfiguration and expansion. It then proceeds to describe the implementation on our chosen real-world application, autonomous robotic welding which involves 3 robotic arm manipulator units and sensor integration. Finally, we discuss the merits of our system as well as future possibilities.