Interfacing Toolbox for Robotic Arms with Real-Time Adaptive Behavior Capabilities

Industrial robotic systems are increasingly being used to perform tasks requiring in-loop adaptive behavior to accommodate the demands of data-driven and autonomous manufacturing in the era of Industry 4.0. Achieving effective integration and the full potential of robotic systems presents significant challenges. This paper presents a C++ language-based toolbox, developed to facilitate the integration of industrial robotic arms with server computers, sensors and actuators. The new toolbox, namely the “Interfacing Toolbox for Robotic Arms” (ITRA), is fully flexible and extensible. It is capable of controlling multiple robots simultaneously, thus providing the opportunity for sophisticated manufacturing operations to be coordinated among multiple robots. ITRA can be used to achieve fast adaptive robotic systems, with latency as low as 30ms. Moreover, ITRA is cross-platform, allowing great flexibility between different computer architectures. The paper describes the architecture of ITRA, presents all its functions and gives some application examples.