Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Robots and MTConnect at NIST

Great article on robots and MTConnect at NIST.  

Below is a snippet...



"Once uncommunicative industrial robots and machine tools are now beginning to talk turkey, thanks to a prototype application developed by a team of partner companies led by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM). This application was successfully demonstrated and tested by manufacturing researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
The practical advance stems from a “generic bridge” devised to span a costly, performance-slowing language barrier in factories. In effect, the innovation is a translator that converts data and messages written in two languages—one preferred by robotics researchers, ROS-Industrial, and the other by the builders of machine tools, MTConnect—into a form understandable to both.
The link eliminates the need to do a full-blown conversion of computer codes to get robots and machine tools from different vendors to handle complex interactions smoothly. Instead, using the bridge entails writing the equivalent of a mutually understood introduction—a “wrapper” in software parlance—that makes it possible for the entire message to get through."