5G enabled flexible lineless assembly systems with edge cloud controlled mobile robots

Abstract

Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and mobile manipulators are becoming increasingly popular in industrial use cases, especially for flexible lineless assembly systems. These use cases require wireless communication with high reliability and jitter-minimized bounded latency. This paper describes an industrial use case, where edge-controlled AMRs collaboratively perform various screw installation tasks on a truck chassis. We integrate Time Sensitive Networking (TSN) features such as time synchronization and IEEE 802.1CB based Frame Replication and Elimination for Reliability (FRER) scheme with 5G wireless communication to realize this use case. Moreover, we apply hold and forward buffer (HFB) mechanism to minimize communication jitters. This paper highlights the performance benefits of the aforementioned TSN features for 5G communication in the edge-controlled AMR use case. Our empirical evaluation with over-the-air performance results obtained on an industrial shopfloor brings significant insights on using 5G for edge-controlled robotic use cases.