bbpi, Bidirectional Bit Pipeline Interface - a Flexible Approach for Actuator and Sensor Communication in Robotic Systems

Kurzfassung

A robot can be described as a heterogeneous com munication system comprising different communication stan dards covering up to the lower four layers of the ISO OSI model [1]. The high speed backbone communication which connects spatially separated units (e.g. joints) with the control unit, benefits from established standards. At the actuator and sensor level this is not the case. Actuators and sensors are often directly integrated via their chip to chip communication in their containing unit. However, the advantage of a lower development effort through a direct integration is bought at a high price by the expense of flexibility, versatility and modular expandability. Robotic systems are closely connected to computing trends like e.g. big data, machine learning, etc. To react to this trends a flexible communication infrastructure especially at the sensor and actuator level is also required. The introduction of standard interfaces and associated protocols eases the exchange of actuators and sensors or even enables an expandability in contrast to the development of a new system. In this paper we introduce the bidirectional bit pipeline interface (bbpi) which tries to fill that gap by defining a standard for sensor and actuator interconnection for both field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) as well as microcontrollers (µCs).