Research And Realization Of The Real-time Robot Monitor And Communication System

Robotics and Thermal Spray are both the new high-tech in the revolution of the new technology. Robotics is composed of mechanical engineering, electronics engineering, information engineering, automation engineering and artificial intelligence etc. It's one of the activist fields in the present age. Thermal Spray is composed of material engineering, physics, chemistry, biologic macromolecule etc. It becomes a new wide used surface process technique. These two technologies are combined together to make robots more wide used and make the coating quality improved.This paper researches some problems of using robots in thermal spraying. It provides a solution of monitoring spraying robots. Use an external PC to communicate with the robot, obtain the real-time movements of the robot. This system not only records the robot path, but also calculates the important operation parameters of the spraying, e.g. robot speed, tool orientation, etc.In this paper, we research on the ABB robot and robot communication protocol RAP. Also research on the low level RPC (Remote Procedure Call) protocol and the network system structure of the robot communication. And we finish developing the robot communication module running under Windows32.In paper, we provide the hardware platform of the robot communication and realize communicating with the robot by using RAP protocol. We develop the real-time robot monitor system to simple the movement of the spraying robot, and calculate the moving parameters, also display the path in 3-D coordinate system.In the developing of the system, we realize the high precision timing in Windows by using the PC's hardware timer. Use industrial standard graphic technology -OpenGL to display the path of the robot. And all the developments observe themethod of the software engineering to ensure the software quality.In the testing, the monitoring system runs stably and credibly. It realizes monitoring the robot online, finishes recording and outputting the operation parameters which are important for thermal spray. The system provides the exact data for thermodynamics analysis and trustful foundation of the spray strategy. It also establishes a foundation of developing robot application software package. At the beginning of 2003, this system has passed the acceptance check in LERMPS of University of Technology of Belfort-Montebeliard in France. And it obtains good appraisements of the engineer in the laboratory.