An open embedded hardware and software architecture applied to industrial robot control

This paper presents an open embedded hardware and software architecture for industrial robot control. Open hardware refers to open source IP-core provided by the authors, while open software implies the use of open source software, specifically Linux and OROCOS [1]. Embedded implies integration of various functional blocks on one System-On-Chip board, for data acquisition, computation and control tasks, of relatively small size and low power consumption, compared to regular PC-based industrial controllers. The proposed architecture is a hardware and software co-design where an operating system running on an embedded processor drives the FPGA hardware controllers. It is industrial robot type independent, as long as the motors are equipped with incremental position encoders and driven by PWM signals. The architecture has been tested on an industrial Performer MK2 robot setup. Low cost, low power consumption, remarkable stability, high flexibility and expandability are the key advantages of the architecture for industrial robot control.