Development of a control system for a HEXA parallel robot

A new control architecture for the HEXA parallel robot is presented in this paper. The control algorithm is implemented directly into the robot PLC to allow real-time control for complex trajectories which ensures the safe behavior of the HEXA robot. The HEXA robot is a six degrees of freedom fully-parallel robot structure which could provide high stiffness and accuracy, very good dynamic behavior and efficient payload capacity. The new control system uses the communication system POWERLINK and the programming standard PLCOpen which enabled the setup of a generalized basic structure for the control of any 6-axes robotic structure.