Energy conservation is a key aspect towards sustain-ability and is pursued by both, research and industry. To this end, we present measurements of the power consumption of two industrial robots. Based on a selected motion pattern the velocity and acceleration of the robot is varied and we show that the power is measurable with good repeatability. The energy of these motions is calculated from the power time series. Contrary to expectations it turns out that slow motions are not necessarily the most energy efficient. Finally, we show that the best strategy for energy conservation depends heavily on the robot model
Based on recent industrial needs for a flexible integration of supervisory control systems and novel intuitive manual control units a new control layer is introduced. The control layer affords adaptive behaviour in terms of process and motion planning as well as flexible manual control of arbitrary robot controllers. It is located between the industrial robot controller and the control units. For the purpose of a flexible manufacturer-independent access to the robot controller we define an object-oriented programming interface. The set of robot commands is manufacturer-independent and includes all basic robot functions regarding motion and program control. An inherent capability of the control layer is the transformation of neutral object-oriented robot commands to manufacturer-specific robot languages. With an emphasis on the development of a flexible control layer, we aim for a media-independent communication solution. In order to cover a broad range of robotic applications, different communication standards of industrial automation are implemented. Finally, two applications, a smartphone robot control and a distributed robot control system, are presented and discussed.
Rising demands to smaller lot sizes and more flexibility in production processes inspired the idea of selforganising production by the use of "intelligent" parts. This is achieved by self-sustaining wireless nodesProcess-eGrains -to transfer the production control and logic from a centralised approach to a distributed logic. This paper will show the requirements in an industrial environment from an application perspective to these nodes. We present the middleware design implemented on an agent-driven architecture. Abstracting from different hardware it provides a unified interface for storing and processing information independently and locally and negotiate among each other. The application is exemplified through a part driven assembly.
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