Hiding real-time: A new approach for the software development of industrial robots

—Software development for industrial robots is still strongly limited by the use of old-style robot programming languages. These languages are tailored to meet a special requirement in robotic control systems: The need for hard real-time control. This requirement mainly seems to prevent the transition to methods and tools of today’s software engineering, like software development processes, object-oriented programming and modern development environments. This paper introduces a new architectural approach that enables this transition by introducing a strict separation between real-time critical control and non real-time critical application functionality. This can lead to an industrialization of software development for industrial robotics.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: IROS
• Authors: Alwin Hoffmann, Andreas Angerer, Frank Ortmeier, Michael Vistein, Wolfgang Reif
• Keywords: Hard Real-time Control, IROS 2009, Old-style Robot Programming, Robotics, Software Development