Retrofitting an automatic manufacturing workcell for study of open architecture integration of mechatronic systems

Research work on plug-and-play open architecture and object-oriented mechatronic system integration is described. The original controllers of two popular industrial robot manipulators Puma 560 and IBM 7575 are completely retrofitted and integrated with a conveyor system to form a robot workcell. This robot workcell can be programmed to run under the Ch language environment. The outline of the Ch language, and the retrofitting strategy of the robot workcell will be described. A sample application program for simulated assembly operations of this robot workcell will be presented to demonstrate the underlying principles of open architecture integration of mechatronic systems under the programming paradigm of the Ch language environment.