Research On The Master And Slave Design Of Self-reconfigurable Robot Based On EtherCAT

The self-reconfigurable robot consists of multiple standard robot modules,which can be applied in various situations because of its various topologies,greatly reduces the development cost.However,the rapid development of the field of automation makes people put forward higher requirements for robots,and many tasks need to be completed in a short time,which puts forward higher and higher requirements for the response speed of robots.In contrast,the field-bus used between robot joints or self-reconfigurable modules is difficult to meet the response speed requirements of the automation field development due to its low rate and poor real-time characteristics.Industrial Ethernet is the Ethernet that specially used in the industrial automation,which enhance the real-time characters in essence,and retain the very fast transmission rate of Ethernet.At present,there are many mainstream industrial Ethernet networks,among which EtherCAT has gradually become the best choice to replace the traditional field-bus because of its extremely fast transmission speed and strong real-time characteristics.In this paper,for the problems faced by traditional field bus,EtherCAT communication technology is quoted to the field of self-reconfigurable robot to realize the rapid response of self-reconstructed robot system.In order to make the self-reconfigurable robot have the characteristics of various topologies,the chip ET1100 own characteristics of the EtherCAT data link layer chip realizes the topological connection method of EtherCAT at the lowest cost,so that EtherCAT can meet the communication requirements of the self-reconfigurable robot.First,this paper designs the main EtherCAT station,including the construction of its operating environment and the selection design of the protocol stack.Based on the completion of the protocol stack design,the master application is designed so that the master application can control multiple slave stations simultaneously.Secondly,according to the characteristics that the self-reconfigurable robot can form various topologies,the ESC chip ET1100 is used to realize its multiple network port circuit,including its configuration circuit and network port circuit design.At the same time,as the core part of the self-reconfigurable module,the MCU control circuit is also designed.In order to reduce the volume and make the slave station applied to the self-reconfigurable module,the designed circuit board is divided into two boards,between which data communication can be conducted.Finally,the slave station software part is designed,including the slave station protocol stack design and the slave station application design,so that the slave station can control the motor and other equipment under the control command of the master station,and ensure the real-time communication between the main and slave stations at the same time.The experiments show that the software design of the main station and the software design、hardware design of the slave station can realize accurate control of the motor,read the encoder and sensor data,and can operate normally when each station forms different topological configurations,which can be used for self-reconstruction robot communication applications.