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The construction of the open robotic system developed in the framework of this work was necessary because, as it is well known, industrial manipulators do not offer, with an appropriate bandwidth, the possibility of integrating either advanced control algorithms or new sensors into the software-hardware architecture. This fact forced the research community to extend an industrial manipulator architecture in order to get a completely open one in both senses: hardware and software. The proposed platform was designed considering a multi-layer structure that simplified the integration of external functionality in several ways. The first one consisted of offering different interfaces where the user was capable of reading all the parameters and variables, besides modifying the commanded signals, with a considerable bandwidth. The second one pretended to avoid the limitation of the industrial robots where the current methodology is to control exclusively the position without considering high level strategies for task decision making, or without taking into account new sensors that could improve the environment modelling. Certainly, a pending aspect of this platform is the the man-machine interaction. New solutions in the area of software technology have to be included in order to create a more friendly-interface that permits to modify easily the requirements of the system, especially for the experiment generation. Perhaps, creating pseudo intelligent task interpreters, as a experimental interface, will play an important role. Furthermore, it has to be pointed out that the design solutions have been driven following a trade-off between mass products (paying attention to the cost) and standardization requirements (leading edge technology). On the other hand, the proposed architecture was based on consolidated open robotic platforms, specially on those ones developed in Lund University (Sweden) and Leuven University (Belgium). These platforms have been developed during several decades and have accumulated a great deal of experience, representing an excellent paradigm for initial developments. In addition, a narrow collaboration with the company of the manipulator robot has existed, what allowed access to internal functions and hardware what would be impossible in other conditions. To conclude this section, the development of this kind of platforms does not only prove to be useful for testing advance control algorithms, but also it is necessary to emphasize the necessity of building such systems since, from a robotic research point of view, and mainly, from a robotic manufacturers overview, it helps to increase the development speed opening up the systems for third party. |
