15th Triennial World Congress of the International Federation of Automatic Control
  Barcelona, 21–26 July 2002 
TELE-MAINTENANCE OF INDUSTRIAL TRANSPORT ROBOTS
Klaus Schilling
University of Applied Sciences FH Ravensburg-Weingarten
Postfach 1261, D-88241 Weingarten, Germany
Tel: +49 751 501 9739, Fax: +49 751 48523
E-mail: schi@ars.fh-weingarten.de

Mobile transport robots are employed for a flexible flow of materials in industrial production. In order to minimize standstill periods in case of defects, the causes are to be analyzed remotely to reduce the time for repair. This paper addresses a telediagnosis infrastructure, allowing a remote service center to receive the crucial sensor data, to submit control commands to the vehicle for tests and to initiate the repair process. The control electronics and the software implementation for this generic telemaintenance approach via internet will be reviewn, as well as experiences in its industrial use.
Keywords: Mobile robots, remote sensor data acquisition, telediagnosis, teleoperations
Session slot T-Fr-M13: Applications of Telematic Systems/Area code 8g : Telematics