RTRobMultiAxisControl: A framework for real-time multi-axis and multi-robot control

H. Fischer (1) , Margot Vulliez (2, 1) , P. Laguillaumie (1) , P. Vulliez (1) , J.-P. Gazeau

1 Département GMSC - Département Génie Mécanique et Systèmes Complexes [Institut Pprime]
2 Stanford Robotics Lab [Stanford]

This paper presents the challenges met in the development of a new framework for multi-axis and multi-robot control. The increasing demand for multi-robot collaboration and robotic assistance, both in industry and service applications, has raised the level of interactions between robots and humans in a shared environment with real-time constraints. Some scientific and technological issues need to be unlocked to ensure safe human-robot interactions: to guarantee the response time during the robot perception-action process, to cope with dynamic interactions with the robot environment, to secure the collaborations between several machines and humans, and to improve the integration of the robots at home and in open zones of production lines. The specifications of a new hardware and software framework are set with respect to these observations. The framework will meet complex research and industrial issues for the future of multi-axis and multi-robot control. Before introducing our approach, a brief survey of existing frameworks and robotic middleware is given. The foundations of our approach are based on the following requirements: the framework must be real-time, transferable, maintainable and multi-manufacturer. The framework design has also to guarantee the robustness of the machine interactions in a dynamic and collaborative environment. To evaluate the feasibility of our design strategy and assess its performance, we have developed mechatronic devices with a high level of human-machine collaboration. This paper outlines two robotic applications which require multi-robot real-time synchronization and are based on the proposed framework. A temporal analysis demonstrates its robustness for multi-axis and multi-robot control. Note to Practitioners: This paper was motivated by the problem of proposing a transferable framework dedicated to real time multi-axis and multi-robot control. Most of existing middleware solutions do not unify accesses to the axis level and to the robot control level with a common programming approach and with real time capability. This is a key problem for achieving multi-robot synchronization and reaction times compatible with dynamic collaboration. Our framework is based on open robotics and object-oriented programming and implements the industrial standards for motion control. Multi-robots control experiments with a high number of synchronized axis and heterogeneous hardware demonstrate the efficiency of the approach.

Mots clés: Multi-axis Control; Multi-robot Control; Collaborative Robotics; Industrial Ethernet; Real-time; Open Robotics; Framework; Middleware

Domaines: Automatique / Robotique; Génie mécanique [physics.class-ph]

H. Fischer, Margot Vulliez, P. Laguillaumie, P. Vulliez, J.-P. Gazeau. RTRobMultiAxisControl: A framework for real-time multi-axis and multi-robot control. IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering, 2019, 16 (3), pp.1205-1217. ⟨10.1109/TASE.2018.2889813⟩. ⟨hal-02876003⟩