Abstract

Robot programming software is mostly proprietary and cannot be used for other manufacturers’ robots. Nevertheless, there is a desire to allow interactions between robots being developed by different manufacturers in order to set up a Multi-Robot System (MRS). An MRS refers to a team consisting of interacting industrial robots which share skills to increase performance. The mapping of classical control development methods for Single-Robot Systems (SRSs) to MRSs is difficult. Based on a classification of interactions within MRSs, a Task-Oriented Control (TOC) approach is suggested and examined. Furthermore, with Simulation Based Control (SBC) an approach for continuous development of event-driven multi-robot controls according to the Rapid Control Prototyping (RCP) is presented. SBC supports TOC and the mapping of interactions via tasks. Based on SBC and MATLAB/Stateflow a prototypical, task-oriented model library for interacting robots is developed and tested.