IAPcloud: A Cloud Control Platform for Heterogeneous Robots

ABSTRACT

The cloud robotic technology makes multiple robots share resource and collaborate with each other more flexibly. Although this concept has been widely accepted by academia since it was put forward, it still faces many challenges in engineering. The main problems are that the functions of industrial robotic systems become more and more complex, and the programming language and computing environment of multiple vendor robots are significantly different, accordingly the cooperative control of different devices and the online testing become extremely difficult. Therefore, this paper proposes a new control platform for cloud robots, called IAPcloud, which has significant advantages in solving the problem of collaborative control a heterogeneous robots and their auxiliary devices, declining the programming difficulties of cloud robotic control systems and shortening the development and deployment cycle of the application. Finally, we verify the scientific and effectiveness of the IAPcloud platform by three cases including the image recognition and tracking, the human-machine gobang game and the online dynamic reconfiguration of control algorithms.

 

EXISTING SYSTEM :

The cloud robotic technology makes multiple robots share resource and collaborate with each other more flexibly. Although this concept has been widely accepted by academia since it was put forward, it still faces many challenges in engineering. The main problems are that the functions of industrial robotic systems become more and more complex, and the programming language and computing environment of multiple vendor robots are significantly different, accordingly the cooperative control of different devices and the online testing become extremely difficult.

PROPOSED SYSTEM :

In this paper proposes a new control platform for cloud robots, called IAPcloud, which has significant advantages in solving the problem of collaborative control a heterogeneous robots and their auxiliary devices, declining the programming difficulties of cloud robotic control systems and shortening the development and deployment cycle of the application.

The method and technology of cloud robots are feasible in engineering, and it can also promote the traditional network control technology in theory. However, the lack of unified technical standards that are vendor-independent and platform-agnostic to improve the interoperability a heterogeneous systems is a critical issue in the current cloud robotic research. It is also one of the most important reasons why the existing cloud robotic platforms can’t be well used in practice or engineering. Fortunately, the distance between the current cloud robotic technical status and its engineering applications can be greatly shortened by IAPcloud, which is presented as a novel control platform of cloud robots and may become their future development trend in our view. Compared with other existing cloud robotic framework, this platform shows significant advantages in many aspects, such as establishing the technical standard of robotic cloud controls, integrating heterogeneous multiple robots or devices, and implementing the collaborative control in a graphical, visual, and reconfigurable way in order to adapt to the flexible manufacturing needs. The main contribution of this paper is to propose the IAPcloud architecture and its detailed design.

CONCLUSION :

The method and technology of cloud robots are feasible in engineering, and it can also promote the traditional network control technology in theory. However, the lack of unified technical standards that are vendor-independent and platform-agnostic to improve the interoperability a heterogeneous systems is a critical issue in the current cloud robotic research. It is also one of the most important reasons why the existing cloud robotic platforms can’t be well used in practice or engineering. Fortunately, the distance between the current cloud robotic technical status and its engineering applications can be greatly shortened by IAPcloud, which is presented as a novel control platform of cloud robots and may become their future development trend in our view. Compared with other existing cloud robotic framework, this platform shows significant advantages in many aspects, such as establishing the technical standard of robotic cloud controls, integrating heterogeneous multiple robots or devices, and implementing the collaborative control in a graphical, visual, and reconfigurable way in order to adapt to the flexible manufacturing needs. The main contribution of this paper is to propose the IAPcloud architecture and its detailed design. The results indicate that it is scientific and feasible to apply the virtual controller technology to solve the collaborative control problem a heterogeneous cloud robots or devices.

In the future, applying platform and service approaches to the control system is the development trend of cloud robots. IAPcloud will face new challenges. Attacks may occur at different levels of the cloud robot system, either at the physical level or the clouds, therefore the information security risk of the industrial production process must be addressed more carefully . Moreover, there is another issue worth studying continuously, that is, how to design the granularity of components to meet the reused need of the robotic control algorithms, while improving the efficiency of the control configuration. In the near future, the platformbased service mode of IAPcloud will be further enhanced, including improving the runtime efficiency of the virtual controller and the resource consumption, promoting the quality of the cloud platform service, designing a flexible collaboration approach and making full use of the robotic resources to tackle more challenging tasks from cloud robotic users.