Internet-based remote manipulation and monitoring of an industry robot in advanced manufacturing systems

Abstract

Remote control and monitoring are crucial in decentralized manufacturing environments. This is evidenced by today’s distributed shop floors where agility and responsiveness are required to maintain high productivity and flexibility. However, there exists a lack of an effective system architecture that integrates remote condition monitoring and control of automated equipment; that gives much consideration about the internet data transfer time delay. This paper presented an internet-based and sensor-driven architecture, which can guarantee the non-distortion transfer of control information and reduce the action time difference between local simulated virtual robot and remote real robot, couple the remote monitoring, and control together. To demonstrate and validate the architectural design, a 3 DOF Fischertechnik industry robot remote operation and monitoring system has been developed. Experimental results are encouraging and demonstrate a promising application in advanced intelligent manufacturing environment.