Flexible Container Platform Architecture for Industrial Robot Control

Abstract

The adoption of virtualization technologies in the development of software has brought advances in concepts such as flexibility and innovation in the field. The advantages introduced by these emerging solutions are widely known in Cloud Computing and Big Data systems. It should also be noted that these concepts have contributed to spreading such technologies in different contexts. Good examples of this are Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS) and Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) providing the future smart factories with advanced flexibility in production. In this sense, this paper proposes a flexible container architecture for industrial control. More specifically, it is focused on multi-purpose controllers or mobile anthropomorphic robots making use of a container solution. To this end, key technologies as Docker or IEC 61499, are used to address at the same time the deployment of flexible functions and the virtualization of control, with legacy support.