WO2012128400A1

WO2012128400A1 - System for controlling an intelligent robot

Info

Publication number: WO2012128400A1
Application number: PCT/KR2011/001935
Authority: WO
Inventors: 문용선; 이영필
Original assignee: 레드원테크놀러지 주식회사
Priority date: 2011-03-21
Filing date: 2011-03-21
Publication date: 2012-09-27
Also published as: KR20120107228A

Abstract

According to the present invention, since an upper controller and lower network modules comprise a descending line and ascending lines, which are optical cables, for independently transmitting data in an upward direction and in a downward direction, the transmission rate is high. Furthermore, by installing a beam splitter/reflector in a physical layer, data are transmitted to a lower network module as well as to another lower network module, and the transmission rate can thus be improved.

Description

Intelligent robot control system

The present invention relates to an intelligent robot control system based on a multi-processor, in which a plurality of motors, sensors, and IO devices are mixed, and more specifically, a network using distributed devices in a robot. The present invention relates to an intelligent robot control system having a new robot-specific motion network structure capable of efficiently integrating and securing high-speed control and high reliability.

In order to control robots and other automation devices, data has been transmitted and received between the master controller and slave controllers that directly control the control object by receiving data from the master controller and the master controller. In order to control a large number of control targets in real time, data transmission and reception using Ethernet has been performed. Korean Patent Application No. 10-2008-74482 (name of the invention: an automated facility control system using Ethernet) (hereinafter referred to as a conventional technology) is installed to connect a plurality of controllers and the above controllers in a network to communicate data. TCP / IP-based Ethernet switch and main computer connected to the above-mentioned Ethernet switch or the Internet to receive data from the controller and transmit control commands to the main computer and high reliability at low installation cost. Although a control system for controlling a controller of the present invention has been disclosed, in the case of applying such a prior art Ethernet to an advanced robot requiring high-level and precise control, the limitation of network processing speed, the lack of synchronization function between devices, and a built-in cable Various problems such as EMI noise inflow The.

In order to solve this problem, a method of applying an optical cable as a physical interface between a host controller and a module has been developed.

1 is a block diagram of a robot control system applying a conventional optical cable.

The optical interface technology shown in FIG. 1 has been applied to a large amount of industrial network systems, not for robot control. In this way, the message frame transmitted from the upper controller 100 is transferred back to the upper controller through the termination module 101 on the network. It mainly uses ring-type message transmission / reception scheme, which has some disadvantages. When using the message feedback scheme of the ring structure, the upper controller 100 cannot directly receive data returned from sensors, IOs, and motors connected to the network. In order to receive the data, the upper controller 100 must receive a message frame to the lower modules first to receive feedback information embedded in the returned message.

Although the EMI problem could be largely solved by such an optical interface structure, it was difficult to achieve high data transmission speed and high reliability due to the inefficient problem that the message reception time of the upper controller also takes twice the transmission time. .

The present invention is to solve these problems, the optical interface technology that has been conventionally applied only to industrial systems, Non-Stopped On The Fly technology for high speed transmission and reception of data and Independent Message Control technology, network Improved control speed and high reliability by integrating optical multi-core interface technology that contributes to improved reliability through line redundancy and Industrial Ethernet protocol technology for high-speed precision motion control It is to provide an intelligent robot control system having a so-called "real-time safety network for robotic multiprocessor controllers".

In the intelligent robot control system consisting of a plurality of lower network modules for transmitting and receiving data and controlling applications connected to the upper controller and the upper controller by an optical cable, the solution means for solving the problem: the optical cable is the upper A descending line through which a control signal is transmitted from a controller to a lower network module; And a first ascending line through which data is transmitted from the lower network modules to the upper controller, wherein data is independently transmitted through the desending line and the first ascending line.

Also, in the present invention, the optical cable may include a second ascending line for transmitting data by replacing the first ascending line when the first ascending line is in an uninterrupted state, and the second ascend instead of the first ascending line. Preferably switching means for alternately transmitting data via the sending line.

Also, in the present invention, an optical splitter / reflector is installed at the connection portion between the optical cable and the lower network module to separate the data input to the lower network module and output the data to the lower network module while outputting to another lower network module. Intelligent robot control system.

According to the present invention having the above problems and solutions, the EMI problem is solved by using the optical cable, using multi-core single-mode optics, independent of using the descending line and the ascending line between the upper controller and the lower network module. By transferring the data, the data transmission speed can be significantly higher than the conventional data transmission structure. Optical splitters / reflectors can also be used to reduce data latency by reducing network latency.

2 is a network configuration diagram of the robot system of the present invention.

3 is a block diagram illustrating data processing using an optical separator / reflector applied in the present invention.

4 is a comparison diagram for comparing the data transmission method of the present invention and the conventional data transmission method.

The data transmission of FIG. 2 is transmitted from the upper controller 1 to the lower network modules 2 and 3 along the descending line, unlike the conventional ring-type message feedback method, and independently of the lower network module 2. ), And (3) the data is transmitted to the upper controller 1 so that the data is transmitted independently.

In this way, by separately separating the transmission message generated by the upper controller 1 and the received message generated and returned from the lower network modules 2 and 3 so that the upper controller operates independently from the received message, Data can be sent at any time and the lower network module also has the flexibility to send data to the upper controller at any time. In addition, the simultaneous processing of the message transmission and reception process between the host controller and the network module enables the implementation of a complete full duplex mode and the message transmission and reception time can be shortened twice as compared with the conventional data ring type structure.

In addition, the physical interface is a multi-core based optical interface technology for the safety and reliability of data. In the multi-core based optical interface technology, multiple optical core lines are used for data transmission and reception. The functions of each optical core line are defined as follows.

① Descending Line: Transmission line that transmits control signal from upper controller to lower network module. It is a line which generates and transmits periodic and aperiodic signals for controlling operation of motor, sensor and IO.

② Ascending 1 Line: This is a receiving line transmitted from the lower network module to the upper controller. It is a line for transmitting information such as sensor and motor feedback which are periodically measured from the network module.

③ Ascending 2 Line: As an auxiliary network line, aperiodic signals such as alarm, motor and sensor parameters, and diagnostic signals are transmitted from the lower network module to the upper controller in normal times. Network line for redundancy to perform functions instead.

FIG. 2 (a) illustrates a case in which the ascending line 1 operates normally. In this state, data is transmitted from the lower network module to the upper controller. However, ascending line 1 is abnormal as shown in FIG. When the lower network module detects the data, the data transmitted by the switching means (not shown) is transmitted to the upper controller through the ascending line 2 so that the data of the system is normally transmitted.

The real-time safety network for robot controllers improves the transmission delay, which is a disadvantage of the "on the fly" technique, to the data processing technique using the "On the Fly" technique, a high-speed data processing technique used in a conventional Ethernet-based motion control network. In order to minimize the transmission delay by using an optical signal splitter / reflector.

On The Fly technology does not mean that the network module receives and processes the entire message frame transmitted from the upper controller, but by copying and processing only the data of the area previously allocated to the network module while the message frame passes the receiving end. In general, data processing delays are calculated to be about 1 us for each network module. Of course, the On The Flay technology can minimize data transmission and reception delays, but the performance of data transmission and reception depends on the number of modules connected on the network.

Therefore, in the present invention, an optical splitter / reflector designed in addition to the connection of the physical layer of the network module, that is, the optical cable and the lower network module, in order to remove the delay time of 1 us which is basically required in each module when the existing On The Fly technology is applied ( Install Optic Separator / Reflector.

The network module consists of applications consisting of a physical layer, a media converter and a PHY, and a data controller layer consisting of a network controller, a microprocessor and a drive, a sensor, and an IO. It is composed of an application layer, and the optical splitter / reflector is additionally installed at the physical layer stage to separate the received data into the data link layer and transmit the data to the next network module. It is a high-speed data processing scheme in which no delay exists except phase delay.

In Figure 4 (b) shows the data transmission rate of the present invention using the optical split reflector, (a) shows the data transmission rate of the general on-the-fly method without using the optical split reflector.

As shown in the figure, the upper control is one, the four network modules and the line delay are calculated as transmission delays fixed at 0.05, indicating that the transmission speed in (b) is about 20 times faster than the transmission speed in (a). Able to know. This difference is even greater as the number of network modules increases.

Claims

An intelligent robot control system comprising an upper controller and a plurality of lower network modules connected to the upper controller by an optical cable to transmit and receive data and control an application:

The optical cable

A descending line through which a control signal is transmitted from the upper controller to a lower network module;

A first ascending line through which data from the lower network modules is transmitted to the upper controller,

Intelligent robot control system, characterized in that the data is transmitted independently through the descending line and the first ascending line.
2. The optical cable of claim 1, wherein the optical cable includes a second ascending line transmitting data by replacing the first ascending line when the first ascending line is in an uninterrupted state, and the second ascend instead of the first ascending line. Intelligent robot control system, characterized in that it further comprises a switching means for alternately transmitting data through the sending line.
The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein the optical cable and the connection portion of the lower network module is provided with an optical splitter / reflector to separate the data input to the lower network module to output to the lower network module and to output to another lower network module Featuring intelligent robot control system.