Modular control system for reconfigurable robot applications

Cooperating robots are a flexible solution for handling and assembling large-scale objects, but they cause high procurement costs and personnel costs for programming. The purpose of the project is to simplify the programming by a new hardware concept of the control system and to guarantee an easy reconfiguration to flexibly adapt and re-use robot cells. Derived from existing solutions, a modular control system had been developed to simplify the programming procedure. It subordinates all robots under an independent central control module, which leads to equality, exchangeability and reconfigurability of the robots. The control system was implemented in a layout of simple kinematic units which can be easily reconfigured within an assembly platform. Therefore the modularity of the control system must follow the modularity of the complete mechatronic system. The control concept is independent from the robot manufacturer and will be validated for different industrial robots in future research. The project targets on applications in aircraft production, where large-scale objects in small batches have to be assembled with cooperating robots.