Simulink-Based Real-Time Control of ABB Industrial 6-DOF Manipulators for Advanced Robotic Applications

Industrial robots have long played a key role in advanced manufacturing thanks to their reprogrammability and adaptability to varied production scenarios. However, due to ever growing requests in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and integration with other equipment, the traditional approach to robot programming, based on the definition of predefined motions, appears increasingly strained. Leading manufacturers of industrial robots have accordingly adapted through the introduction of communication interfaces that allow external computing units to control the manipulator finely and at a high frequency. This work proposes in particular an architecture that enables the control of ABB 6-DOF robot arms using Simulink-based computing platforms, with a special focus on the achievement of hard real-time capabilities. The performance achievable by the resulting system is then experimentally evaluated in a sample, non-standard motion task, with satisfactory results. The overall architecture is shown to be especially suitable for research purposes due to its compatibility on the one hand with a powerful simulation environment and on the other with a wide range of further hardware components such as sensors, cameras and DAQ boards, the use of which may integrated with that of the robot. The main goal of enabling future investigation into topics related to advanced robotic is thus achieved.