Robot Controller Safety Architecture With Dual Emergency Stop Circuits
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing robot control systems face issues of high hardware dependence, poor scalability, and high cost, with safety logic implementation relying on a separate safety unit that can fail to execute emergency stops, leading to low safety levels.
Innovation Solution
A general-purpose computer-based robot control system with interconnected safety unit, servo drive module, and bus transmission master, featuring dual safety circuits and a power module with power-off protection, ensuring emergency stops even in failures, and integrating high-speed and low-speed data transmission interfaces to reduce costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If safety logic is implemented by a separate safety unit, then safety control is specialized, but the system reliability decreases because the safety unit can fail completely
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the safety unit with the robot controller into a unified system. The safety unit is no longer a completely separate module but is integrated with the controller, allowing shared resources and interdependent operation. This integration ensures that the controller can participate in safety logic execution, preventing complete safety control failure even if one component fails.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements preliminary monitoring mechanisms where the controller continuously monitors the safety unit's operation status. Before complete failure can occur, the system detects abnormal conditions (such as communication failures or logic errors) and takes preventive actions, such as switching to backup safety routines or alerting operators, thereby maintaining safety control reliability.
2Productivity
If high-degree intelligence is added to robots, then data processing capabilities improve, but communication costs and internal data communication pressure increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple communication interfaces (high-speed and low-speed) into a unified communication system managed by the robot controller. This integrated approach allows intelligent routing of data traffic, where only necessary data is transmitted over high-speed interfaces, reducing overall communication costs while maintaining high data processing capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The robot controller acts as an intermediary between various communication interfaces and the robot's intelligent processing units. It manages and optimizes data flow, filtering and prioritizing communications to reduce unnecessary data transmission costs while enabling high-degree intelligence functions.
3Reliability
If a separate safety unit is used for safety logic, then safety control is dedicated, but hardware dependence increases and scalability decreases
Solution Approach 1:
The robot controller is designed with multi-functionality, serving both as the main control unit and as a participant in safety logic execution. This universal design allows the same hardware platform to adapt to different safety requirements and application scenarios, improving scalability while maintaining dedicated safety control through software-configurable safety routines.
4Reliability
If dual safety circuits are implemented, then emergency stop reliability improves, but device complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the dual safety circuits into the integrated controller-safety unit system. Rather than completely separate dual safety systems, the circuits are combined within the unified platform, sharing common components like processors and memory while maintaining independent safety logic paths. This reduces overall complexity compared to fully separate dual systems while preserving emergency stop reliability.
Data Source
AI summary
A robot control system includes a robot controller, a data transmission module, a servo drive module, a safety unit, a demonstrator, and a power module. The servo drive module is connected to the robot controller via the data transmission module and receives a movement instruction to drive a robot to move. The safety unit is connected to the robot controller and the servo drive module via the data transmission module and turns off, upon receiving an abnormal input signal or a failure signal, the servo drive module and transmits the abnormal input signal or the failure signal to the robot controller. The demonstrator receives a terminal video signal and a first control interaction signal from the robot controller, and sends a second control interaction signal to the robot controller to control operation of the robot controller. The power module is electrically connected to the robot controller and the safety unit.