Yogesh Kumar, S.K. Srivastava, and A.K. Bajpai
ABSTRACT: The present work is focused on the design and implementation of an Intelligent Modular Controller (IMC) architecture designed to be reconfigurable over a robust network. The design incorporates novel communication, hardware, and software architectures. This was motivated by current industrial needs for distributed control systems. It incorporates the growing demand for less complexity, more processing power, flexibility, and greater fault tolerances.
This paper demonstrates hardware/software co-design as a contribution to the growing discipline of mechatronics. The IMC consists of a motion controller board designed and prototyped in-house, and a Java microcontroller.
An IMC is mapped to each machine/robot axis. An additional IMC can be configured to serve as a real-time coordinator. The entire architecture is implemented in Java. The results show the potential of the flexible controller to meet medium to high performance machining requirements such as surface finish, precision improvement etc.
KEYWORDS: Robot, Intelligent Machines, Mechatronics, Hardware Interfacing.