Beckhoff based arm control system design for Elderly Assisting Robot

As a part of the Elderly Assisting Robot, we designed a Beckhoff based multi-motor controlling system for a four-DOF lightweight robot arm after comparing with present robot arm controlling methods and the market demand analysis. A gear-based two-DOF joint was chosen to realize the dexterity. Various types of PID regulators were implemented to improve the performance of motors. RS232, CANOpen and EtherCAT were used in hardware connections. We compelled the controlling program with error detecting and recovery abilities in IEC 61131-3 standard language in TwinCAT real-time industry PC system to coordinate the communication among different devices. The feasibility and stability is verified by a series of experiments. The research contents, method and results are meaningful to the following further researches in related areas and engineering applications.