Design of Embedded Controller with Flexible Programming for Industrial Robot

Abstract

This paper presents an embedded controller of low cost and high performance for industrial robot. The ARM microprocessor is chosen as the main controller for the processor. Based on the 7-segment cubic spline interpolation algorithm, a real-time control for the robot is implemented. This proposed trajectory method can perfectly generates speed S-curve shape for a start-stop process of the robot. In this article a programming language, G-code, is developped for the robots motion control by using the editing interface we designed specially on PC platform. With all the features for 2-4 degree of freedom robot application, the editing interface has been developed for editing and compiling G-code, which can be downloaded into the microprocessor with the custom communication protocol through communication interface. The programming method of the G-code language is easy to learn and use for the non-professional users. The paper describes the design and implementation in detail for the controller, which was validated on our designed SCARA robot, and it worked reliably.