Low-Cost Cyber-Physical Production Systems for Industrial Control Robots Under IEC 61499

In the current industrial paradigm, the use of traditional and straight-line production systems are being replaced with the objective of generating flexible and modular production process. To achieve this goal, one of the main alternatives used by enterprises is the integration of robotic systems in the production cells. New generation industrial robots are developed to integrate high-performance processing units which can operate under embedded software. This characteristic, indirectly allows robots to be compatible with the concept of Cyber-Physical Production Systems (CPPS), where the high processing and communication capabilities of the devices allows better and faster data exchange among the devices in a distributed system. IEC-61499 provides high-level design capabilities by combining easily software components with independence of the hardware platform used for the generation of CPPSs. This paper discusses an approach of CPPS flexible architecture under IEC-61499 for industrial control of Kuka youBot® robotic arm in industrial welding tasks, using a low-cost device like Raspberry Pi 3B board as industrial controller.