FRANKFURT—Industrial robots are the central components of digital and networked production. That makes it important for them to be able to communicate with each other, regardless of the manufacturer.
The VDMA OPC Robotics Initiative is tackling the challenge and recently released version 1.02 of the OPC Robotics Companion Specification. It allows an OPC UA client to do high-level control of robots, like loading programs and starting and stopping production.
OPC UA is not a communication protocol, but rather a communication technology. It is based on a service-oriented architecture and a server-client model. With the latest 1.02 update, remote operation of a robot system has now been enabled.
“Part 1 of the companion specification addresses asset management, condition monitoring and remote operation,” says Øyvind Landsnes, a senior principal R&D engineer at ABB Robotics who is working on the project. “The model provides vendor independent access to asset information of all integrated robot systems and their components. It also provides a comparison of the statuses and parameters over many installed systems, which allows for the identification of anomalies.”
According to Landsnes, OPC Robotics stands for a complete motion device system that includes a list of motion devices. Motion devices can be any existing robot type or even a future robot type, yet to be conceived.
“Before OPC Robotics, there was no unified interface standard for robots,” claims Landsnes. “Users want one common standard for vendor-independent access for information. More data should be usable in cloud applications, as well as in high level manufacturing systems.”
“Industrial robots are no longer isolated systems,” adds Stefan Hoppe, president and executive director of the OPC Foundation. “They are becoming intelligent, fully integrated assets within the digital factory. Thanks to OPC UA, robots can now speak the same language as the rest of the automation world.
“This achievement by the VDMA OPC Robotics Initiative is not only a milestone for Industry 4.0, but also a key enabler for the broader vision of digitalization, from the shop floor to the cloud, into data spaces and initiatives like Manufacturing-X or Catena-X,” says Hoppe. “OPC UA provides the common modelling language and serves as the foundation for secure, interoperable information exchange across all layers of industrial and digital ecosystems.”
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