Enhanced Flexibility and Reusability through State Machine-Based Architectures for Multisensor Intelligent Robotics

Sensors (Basel). 2017 May 31;17(6):1249. doi: 10.3390/s17061249.

Abstract

This paper presents a state machine-based architecture, which enhances the flexibility and reusability of industrial robots, more concretely dual-arm multisensor robots. The proposed architecture, in addition to allowing absolute control of the execution, eases the programming of new applications by increasing the reusability of the developed modules. Through an easy-to-use graphical user interface, operators are able to create, modify, reuse and maintain industrial processes, increasing the flexibility of the cell. Moreover, the proposed approach is applied in a real use case in order to demonstrate its capabilities and feasibility in industrial environments. A comparative analysis is presented for evaluating the presented approach versus traditional robot programming techniques.

Keywords: computer vision; flexibility; intelligent robotics; multisensor; reusability; software architecture; state machine.