Flexible application development and high-performance motion control based on external sensing and reconfiguration of ABB industrial robot controllers

New robot applications increasingly require external sensing to accomplish robustness and performance despite the variations and uncertainties that come with the increasing demands on flexibility for manufacturing of customized products. The demands on productivity then require high performance, which for well known feedback-control reasons means short response times from external process event to reaction on the robot motor control. The need for high- performance sensor interfaces connected to the motion control without excessive buffering and computations has therefore gained increasing attention over the last decade. Apart from high sampling frequencies and short latencies, there are also engineering aspects to consider. Control engineering tools should be possible to utilize, additional computing power is better connected via real-time Ethernet connections, and all interfaces should check compatibility without sacrificing performance. Furthermore, all that should preferably coexist with the original system, superimposing the effects on external sensing while still maintaining safety and consistency of data. The reason is that the original control software is model based and built on millions of lines of C-code, and tested beyond the possibilities of a research lab. Such a system has been accomplished for control and application development using ABB robots. A short description of the system is given, and its use for application/control development is exemplified. User specific feedback control can be done easily with short sampling periods and less than 1ms of latency from sensing to motor reaction. (Less)