Control of an industrial robot subjected to base mobility

To remove the cell size limitation and to make cellular manufacturing systems more flexible, research has been conducted in which an industrial robot has been given base mobility via an air pallet base and use of existing joint actuators and strategically located, compliant posts. For investigating this new approach of robot mobility within a cell, an appropriate control system has been designed and implemented that interfaces with the standard industrial controller. This paper is a presentation of the resulting control system consisting of multiple-sensor integration into its hierarchical levels. Using the concept of logical sensors, experimental verification is presented for each of the logical sensor subsystems and its successful integration with the existing industrial controller. Experimental results obtained for the fully integrated robot controller illustrate the effectiveness of the multiple-sensor, hierarchical controller for self-propelled mobile robots operating within a manufacturing cell