Development and implementation of a real time system for distributed control of laboratory robot

Abstract

This paper focuses on the development of distributed architecture control of an industrial robot. The hardware implementation of a closed loop controller via networked microcontrollers is presented. The developed design is a real time multi-tasking control law system. The control architecture is distributed in five microcontrollers with master slave scheme. The master unit is dedicated for the network management and the communication with the user-interface. Each slave board focuses on the position control of the corresponding joint. An implementing embedded control for brushless motor is established. I2C protocol is implemented for the network management. A user- interface for monitoring and control is developed. The control is done through an usb communication assured with a compatible drivers on the three most popular platforms (windows, Linux and Mac OS).