An implemetation of a teleoperated robot control architecture on a PLC and field-bus based plarform

Abstract

Teleoperated robots are used to perform hazardous tasks that human operators cannot carry out. The purpose of this paper is to present a new architecture (ACROSET) for the development of these systems that takes into account the current advances in robotic architectures while adopting the component-oriented approach. ACROSET provides a common framework for developing this kind of robotized systems and for integrating intelligent components. The architecture is currently being used, tested and improved in the development of a family of robots, teleoperated cranes and vehicles which perform environmentally friendly cleaning of ship-hull surfaces (the EFTCoR project). This paper summarises the features of this project and describes the implementation of ACROSET on a hardware platform based on a PLC (Programmed Logic Controller) SIEMENS SIMATIC S7-300 and the Field-Bus PROFIBUS DP.