Replacing cables on robotic arms by using serial via Bluetooth

Abstract

Most industrial robot workcells today are still characterized by a lot of external cables. In fact, cable management remains an important aspect of robot integration, often significantly impacting robot workspace and motion planning. In this paper, we discuss our solution to replace external cables with a wireless connection. While wireless networks are widely used for educational robots and teleoperation of mobile platforms, integration of wireless communication into industrial setups requires careful consideration, and the risks and potential loss of reliability must be evaluated. We present experimental results on the performance of our system, including measured Bluetooth latencies and packet-loss in several scenarios. In our case, the advantages of the cable-less system, including simplified motion planning, fewer self-collisions, and use of 3D-sensing for collision detection greatly outweigh any loss in reliability.