Upgrade of a Scara robot using Orocos

Abstract

This paper presents a bottom-up approach that permits the integration of new devices and functionalities into a robotic cell. Although there are currently notable efforts from the scientific community toward this goal, the initiative presented here combines some trends in architectural design from academic research institutes and tools produced by the free software community in order to seek a simple and accessible way to develop a modular environment for robot control. To demonstrate the features of this approach, this paper presents some results inspired by industrial and academic research, which illustrate an increasing degree of openness regarding robotic control. This is accomplished by the use of Linux Kernel Modules (LKMs) which insert new functionalities as they are needed, a real time operating system and the Open Robot Control Software project (Orocos).