control system
The main task of industrial robot control technology is to control the range of motion, posture, trajectory, and timing of actions of industrial robots in the workspace. It features simple programming, software menu operation, a user-friendly human-machine interface, online operation prompts, and ease of use.
The controller system is the heart of a robot, and foreign companies have maintained tight control over its testing in my country. In recent years, with the development of microelectronics technology, microprocessors have become increasingly powerful while their prices have decreased. Currently, 32-bit microprocessors costing only $1-2 are available on the market. These cost-effective microprocessors have brought new development opportunities to robot controllers, making it possible to develop low-cost, high-performance robot controllers. To ensure sufficient computing and storage capabilities, robot controllers now mostly adopt powerful chips such as ARM, DSP, POWERPC, and Intel series.
Because existing general-purpose chips cannot fully meet the requirements of some robot systems in terms of price, functionality, integration, and interfaces, the demand for System-on-Chips (SoC) technology has emerged. 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 controllers, research is mainly concentrated in the United States and Japan, with mature products available from companies such as Deltatau in the US and Punch Power Systems in Japan. Their motion controllers are based on DSP technology and employ a PC-based open architecture.
Sensing system
It consists of internal and external sensor modules, acquiring meaningful information about the internal and external environmental conditions.
Internal sensors: These are sensors used to detect the robot's own state (such as the angle between its arms), and are mostly sensors that detect position and angle. Specifically, they include: position sensors, angle sensors, etc.
External sensors: Sensors used to detect the robot's environment (e.g., detecting objects and their distance) and condition (e.g., detecting whether a grasped object has slipped). These include distance sensors, vision sensors, and force sensors.
The use of intelligent sensing systems has improved the mobility, practicality, and intelligence of robots. While human perception systems are more dexterous than robots in understanding information from the external world, sensors are more effective than human systems for certain specific information.
