Multithreaded Software Control of Industrial Manipulator Movement

Abstract

Modern production requires the use of automation tools in the manufacturing process. One of the most commonly used technical means is an industrial manipulator. The concept of Industry 4.0 involves the use of special software tools that allow you to conveniently and visually debug control programs using the visualization of the process of simulating the movement of its mechanical parts in real time. This paper describes the technique of multithreaded software control of the movement of a two-link manipulator with three degrees of freedom. The proposed technique uses a set of independent timers, which allow to implement independent flows of controlling the progress of program execution. The process of distributing tasks between threads and the synchronization algorithm are described. The proposed technique can be used both for simulating the manipulator motion control process and for direct motion control using a serial data transfer interface and commands in G-Code format.