MATLAB/Simulink Based Rapid Control Prototyping for Multivendor Robot Applications

Abstract

Industrial robots are used in various fields of application and many robot manufacturers are active in the market. In most cases, their software solutions are proprietary and, consequently, they cannot be used for third party robots. Moreover, the integration of external hard-or software is highly restricted. Long term standardization efforts for robot programming languages, such as the Industrial Robot Language (IRL) and its successor , the Programming Language for Robots (PLR), have been mostly ignored by robot manufacturers. This fact leads to a restriction on the combined usage of robots. Multi-robot applications where robots have to interact are usually limited to software solutions and robots of one manufacturer. On the other hand, control design in engineering is often carried out by the usage of Scientific and Technical Computing Environments (SCEs) like MATLAB. The Robotic Control & Visualization Toolbox (RCV Tbx) for MATLAB/Simulink tries to close the gap between robot manufacturer-specific software solutions and SCEs. The current version of the RCV Tbx supports a uniform and integrated control development for KUKA and KAWASAKI robots in the MATLAB/Simulink environment. An extension to other robot types is straight forward. Thus, the implementation of heterogeneous multi-robot applications is considerably simplified.