Development of Ethernet/IP Adapter for Explicit Messaging in Cooperative Robot Communication

There are many robot industries in the world, but most of them only support Modbus communication. However, Ethernet/IP (EIP) is only supported by some robotics industries. EIP is more flexible than Modbus due to the amount of information exchanged which is wide in range. This paper is study of development an efficient and highly scalable EIP adapter for cooperative robots for the robotics industry. This module is developed to ensure EIP-based intercommunication for explicit messaging among Industrial Automation Machines. Explicit messaging enables acyclic data transfer for communication, and our architecture works without requiring physical components. Further, Ethernet/IP adapters are implemented and tested using EEIP DLL, EADK EDITT, etc. Thus, the architecture is reliable and flexible. Using our EIP module, the scalability and both cyclic-acyclic data transfer ability of the robot system are enhanced. The development time of the communication system can be shortened based on the reuse of the software module. In the future, through effective EIP communication, robot failure diagnosis will be performed based on AI, enabling effective maintenance.