The Design Of Industrial Robot Controller’s Communication System Based On EtherCAT

With the rapid development of science and technology, as well as high automatic and intellective level in manufacturing, industrial robots have been increasingly used. At the same time, the real-time response and information processing of robot system should meet higher demands. Taking the industrial computer as the core of robot controller, which is the robot’s brain, leads to big volume and high cost. Thus, entrusted by a mechanical and electrical company in Nanjing, Nanjing Institute of Technology’s automation college and the detection technology and automatic equipment research of Southeast University cooperative r&d the industrial robot controller which is centered on embedded processor. According to the arrangement of mentor, the master degree theses is about to design and develop industrial robot controller’s communication system based on EtherCAT independently.Robot controller’s communication system sets up a network in the control system.The design of communication system is very important, its speed and stability determine robot’s performance.According to the requirements, the master degree thesis designed industrial robot controller’s communication system based on EtherCAT for the robot controller to develop and improve competitveness of domestic products, which has great significance.At first, the thesis completed the subject research, analyzed project’s demands, and completed overall design of industrial robot controller’s communication system.Then this paper put forward the hardware scheme, which is based on two AM335X microcontrollers and uses the DPRAM to communicate.The module circuit included DPRAM, communication interface, network interface and so on.This paper accomplished the debug of module circuit and system hardware. Then it built system software platform Xenomai/Linux on the basis of hardware, which has higher precision and real-time characteristic.The real-time task scheduling of operation system can reach microsecond level. Based on Xenomai/Linux, it accomplished system’s software to realize basic function of communication system, including DPRAM hardware drivers, EtherCAT protocol stack’s migration, system communication protocol’s formulation, interpreter software, the application layer’s software and so on. Finally the system was debugged in the corporation of teaching device and servo system. According to the result of experiments, the system not only achieves the stable communication function between industrial robot controller’s communication system and teaching device, but also ensures the real-time communication function within the system, between communication system and servo system.The prototype of communication system run smoothly in laboratory environment, and then the system will be debugged with EtherCAT slave station and teaching device, in order to perfect the system.