The design of an open controller for an industrial robot

This paper presents an open controller which is designed for bending the hull steel plates. It is an industrial robot that is based on the SERCOS bus and carries out a so-called "bending by line heating" procedure in China. To treat with the diversity of the original steel plates\´ shapes, we designed an open controller for it. The controller is open because it provides a set of instructions with which the end user can compile different programs according to the different working procedures. A positioning method used in the saddle type plate forming is also introduced.