Open Software Structure for Controlling Industrial Robot Manipulators

Automatic control has become an important part of the modern industrial processes. Progress both in basic research as applied to automatic control, provide a way to obtain the optimum performance of the dynamical systems, improve the quality and reduce the costs. Robotics, as a part of automatics, represents nowadays an important research area, and it has an essential role in the productive modernization (UNECE and IFR, 2005). The inclusion of industrial manipulators in the manufacturing process allows obtaining better and cheaper products. Therefore, the development of an open software structure for the industrial robots controlling is a very important objective to be achieved (William, 1994), (Frederick and Albus, 1997). The main characteristic of an open software structure for robotics applications is the interface that relates the components of the robot with the basic internal structure. In industrial area, one of the most important works was developed in the framework of the European project OSACA (Open System Architecture for Control within Automation Systems). Similarly, significant contributions were reached in Japan through OSEC (Open System Environment for Controllers) under IROFA (International Robotics and Factory Automation Center), (Sawada and Akira, 1997), and in the United States of America through OMAC (Open Modular Architecture Control). The objective of all these research projects is to develop an open control system including the reference model of the components, the general application interface and the structure so that all the components work together. So far manufacturers do not work together to develop standard control software that could be applied to any industrial robot. On the other hand, several commercial software packages, that run under Windows, for mobile robots can be found. Among the best known ones, Advanced Robotics Interface for Applications (ARIA) is used in the robots manufactured by Mobile Robots Inc., BotController software were developed by MobotSoft and it is used for the well known Khepera and Koala robots. Even when these software packages are powerful and have many benefits, they can be applied only to the robots that were developed. 23