Towards a Connected Robotic Ecosystem

One of the key promises of Industry 4.0 is to highlight the connectivity between different components. Although existing frameworks can manage networked robotic systems, the robotic and networking components are still rigidly separated. To tackle the challenges, we propose a concept of why and how modern robotic systems should include standardised connectivity features and network components in a complex robotic system. In this paper, we present our idea of bringing robot systems and networks closer by augmenting current standard technologies. As part of the IEEE P2940 standardisation goal, the formal description of robot systems is extended to include network components in a standardised way. We show how this can be implemented using a popular robot system development framework to support connectivity features. We also show an example evaluation done with an industrial manipulator model.