Authors:
Martino Migliavacca
;
Andrea Bonarini
and
Matteo Matteucci
Affiliation:
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Keyword(s):
Real-time Communication, CAN-bus, Robot Design, Distributed Architecture for Robots.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Industrial Networks and Automation
;
Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics
;
Mechatronics Systems
;
Mobile Robots and Autonomous Systems
;
Robot Design, Development and Control
;
Robotics and Automation
Abstract:
Robots are distributed systems where different devices perform specific tasks and need to exchange data to run the overall system. In this paper, the communication requirements of robotic systems are summarized, highlighting which characteristics are relevant to the different tasks and showing the limits of the present communication protocols. Then, RTCAN is presented: a new real-time CAN-Bus protocol for robotic applications, which aims at combining the advantages of different approaches to communication scheduling. RTCAN takes into account time-triggered communication derived from control loops, guaranteeing temporal determinism, as well as event-triggered communication by sensors, which are transmitted with low latency. An implementation of the protocol is available as open-source software library, which can easily be ported to new platforms. Finally, results from benchmarks performed on actual hardware are reported, showing the ability of RTCAN in handling heterogeneous communica
tions.
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