Wireless communication for control of manipulation systems

The paper deals with a novel application of the wireless data communication for a continual control of the distributed manipulation systems. The solution is intended for industrial robotic plants. A considered way of the wireless communication is based on ZigBee protocol. The protocol is tested for a real time bidirectional data communication within a manipulation system. The system consists of several moving manipulation units, several stationary auxiliary units and one control computer. The computer provides the cooperation of all units in the system in relation to the user requirements. The system is controlled by a simple feedback multi-level control realized in MATLAB - Simulink environment. The paper is focused on the realization of the boards of power electronics, transmitters, optical positional sensors, optical gates and their networking in accordance with ZigBee protocol definition. The behavior of the ZigBee is illustrated by several records from real experiments.