1. Hardware Structure of Industrial Robot Control System
The controller is the core of a robot system, and foreign companies have imposed strict embargoes on it in China. In recent years, with the development of microelectronics technology, microprocessors have become increasingly powerful and affordable, with 32-bit microprocessors now available for as low as $1-2. These cost-effective microprocessors have brought new development opportunities to robot controllers, making it possible to develop low-cost, high-performance controllers. To ensure sufficient computing and storage capabilities, current robot controllers mostly use high-performance chips such as ARM, DSP, POWERPC, and Intel chips. Furthermore, because existing general-purpose chips cannot fully meet the requirements of certain robot systems in terms of price, performance, integration, and interfaces, there is a demand for System-on-Chip (SoC) technology. Integrating a specific processor with the required interfaces simplifies the design of peripheral circuits, reduces system size, and lowers costs. For example, Actel integrates NEOS or ARM7 processor cores into its FPGA products, forming a complete SoC system. In the field of robot motion controllers, research is mainly concentrated in the United States and Japan, with mature products available from companies such as DELTATAU (USA) and PTZ (Japan). Their motion controllers are based on DSP technology and employ an open PC-based architecture.
2. Industrial Robot Control System Architecture
In terms of controller architecture, the research focus is on functional partitioning and the standardization of information exchange between functions. In the research of open controller architectures, there are two basic structures: one is a hardware-layer-based structure, which is relatively simple. In Japan, the architecture is partitioned based on hardware; for example, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries divides its PA210 portable general-purpose intelligent arm robot into a five-layer structure. The other is a function-based structure, which considers both hardware and software, and is the direction of research and development in robot controller architecture.
3. Control the software development environment
Regarding robot software development environments, most industrial robot companies have their own independent development environments and robot programming languages, such as Motoman (Japan), KUKA (Germany), Adept (USA), and ABB (Sweden). Many universities have conducted extensive research on robot development environments, providing a wealth of open-source code that can be integrated and controlled on certain robot hardware architectures. Numerous related experiments have already been conducted in laboratory environments. Existing robot system development environments both domestically and internationally include TeamBots v.2.0e, ARIA v.2.4.1, Player/Stage v.1.6.5.1.6.2, Pyro v.4.6.0, CARMEN v.1.1.1, MissionLab v.6.0, ADE v.1.0beta, Miro v.CVS-March17.2006, MARIE v.0.4.0, FlowDesigner v.0.9.0, RobotFlow v.0.2.6, and others. From the perspective of the robot industry's development, there are two main demands for robot software development environments. One is from end-users who not only use robots but also want to add more functionality through programming. This programming is often implemented using visual programming languages, such as the graphical programming environment of LEGO MindStormsNXT and the visual programming environment provided by Microsoft Robotics Studio.
4. Robot-specific operating system
(1) VxWorks: VxWorks is an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) designed and developed by Wind River Systems in 1983. It is a key component of the Tornado embedded development environment. VxWorks features a customizable microkernel architecture; efficient task management; flexible inter-task communication; microsecond-level interrupt handling; support for the POSIX 1003.1b real-time extension standard; and support for various physical media and standard, complete TCP/IP network protocols.
(2) Windows CE. Windows CE has good compatibility with the Windows series, which is undoubtedly a major advantage for the promotion of Windows CE. Windows CE provides a feature-rich operating system platform for building dynamic applications and services for handheld devices and wireless devices. It can run on a variety of processor architectures and is generally suitable for devices with certain limitations on memory usage.
(3) Embedded Linux, due to its open-source nature, can be freely modified to meet individual application needs. Most of it complies with the GPL, meaning it's open-source and free. It can be easily modified for use on user-defined systems. There's a large developer community, requiring only knowledge of Unix/Linux and C. It supports a vast number of hardware devices. Embedded Linux is essentially no different from regular Linux; it supports almost all hardware used on PCs. Furthermore, the source code for drivers for various hardware is readily available, greatly facilitating users in writing drivers for their proprietary hardware.
(4) C/OS-II, C/OS-II is a well-known open-source real-time kernel designed for embedded applications and can be used with 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers or digital signal processors (DSPs). Its main features are open source code, good portability, firmware compatibility, customizability, preemptive kernel, determinism, etc.
(5) DSP/BIOS. DSP/BIOS is a customizable real-time multitasking operating system kernel designed and developed by TI specifically for its TMS320C6000TM, TMS320C5000TM, and TMS320C28xTM series DSP platforms. It is a component of TI's CodeComposerStudio™ development tool. DSP/BIOS mainly consists of three parts: a multi-threaded real-time kernel; real-time analysis tools; and chip support libraries. Developing programs using a real-time operating system allows for convenient and rapid development of complex DSP programs.
5. Robot servo communication bus technology
Currently, there is no dedicated servo communication bus for robot systems internationally. In practical applications, commonly used buses such as Ethernet, CAN, 1394, SERCOS, USB, and RS-485 are typically used in robot systems according to system requirements. Most current communication control buses can be categorized into two types: serial bus technology based on RS-485 and wire-driven technology, and high-speed serial bus technology based on real-time industrial Ethernet.
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