IoT-based networking for humanoid robots

Abstract

In this paper, a new network communication approach, named real-time network (RTNET), is designed and implemented for humanoid robots. The proposed five network objects – alarm, condition, message, mail, and file are used to represent the task and priority of the communication data. Compared to the existing protocols, the network scheduling mechanism of RTNET arranges, more efficiently, the priority and flow control of the five network communication objects to meet real-time requirements for the limited bandwidth of the local area network. RTNET can be further integrated with other protocols, such as EtherCAT or controller area networks (CAN Bus) for local control systems, e.g. robot arms, to improve the communication mechanism. The RTNET can also be used over Ethernet to connect each subsystem and to exchange information among those systems. Also, an Internet of things (IoT) network structure based on RTNET is proposed in this paper. The information of each subsystems is collected through RTNET and users can access all components in the IoT network. In this paper, the concept of RTNET is presented and RTNET has been implemented on a National Taiwan University (NTU) humanoid robot control system with CAN Bus.