A Dependable Real-Time Platform for Industrial Robotics

Industrial Robots are complex systems with hard real time, high safety, reliability and availability requirements. Robot Controllers are part of these systems and they are complex hard real time computers, which control a robot’s mechanical parts. To be useful, Robot Controllers must be programmable by end customers. This is typically done through a domain and vendor specific programming languages. In this position paper, we will describe some of the architectural challenges we are facing and work we have done, in the process of turning the Robot Controller from an application platform into a dependable platform whose base functionality can be extended by a third party which is not necessarily the end customer. 1