A suboptimal multimedia remote supervisory control of a robotic cell

This paper deals with the problem of developing a low cost remote superviso ry control system with multimedia features of distributed robotic cells. Th e distributed robotic cells are locally controlled by different vendor syst ems. In the automated factories, a low cost and not isochronous backbone ne twork is usually installed to transfer process data from the production lev el to the other ones. The proposed architectural prototype makes possible o n different remote platforms a supervisory control with full process databa se access and field audio/video signal. The case of field vocal messages an d animated plant synoptic using the low cost factory backbone network has b een considered. On the remote station it is possible to use commercial supe rvisory control applications. A first case study, the remote supervision of a robotic cell, installed in the University of Naples, has given satisfyin g results. In addition, this application has shown the possibility of using the prototype for educational and research purposes, making available remo te access to laboratories.