REMOTE OPERATION OF ABB IRB 1400 S4 ROBOT OVER THE INTERNET P. Reguera, M. Domínguez, H. Alaiz, J.J. Fuertes, M.A. Prada, R. García Instituto de Automática y Fabricación. Área: Automática y Control. Escuela de Ingenierías Industrial e Informática, Campus Universitario de Vegazana, Universidad de León. 24071 León, España. Tfno: +34-987-291694. e-mail: {diepra, diemdg, dieham, diejfu, diempm}@unileon.es, robgava@hotmail.com Abstract: Remote laboratories need physical systems with TCP/IP NIC´s (Network Interface Cards) to connect them to the Internet. This paper shows a simple way to connect a ABB IRB 1400 S4 Robot to the Internet. This robot has not TCP/IP NIC, it only has a Serial Port. The idea is to configure SLIP (Serial Line Interface Protocol) over a null modem cable. Copyright © 2006 IFAC Keywords: Remote Control, Control Education, Monitored Control Systems. 1. INTRODUCTION The huge expansion which has taken place in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has caused a great development of the Internet as a way of transmission and diffusion of information. This expansion has evolved from a unidirectional transmission of the information, where users were the only recipients, to the current exchange of information between users and physical systems. This fact causes that the Internet has started to be used in areas like supervision, maintenance and systems, or processes operation, as a physical and logical support to their applications. This opens new research fields such as remote supervision, robot programming and teleoperation via the Internet. (Baruch, 1996; Castells, 2001; Luo, 2000). The field of teaching deserves a special attention. In this field, from several years ago, there are technological structures to share remote devices in the Internet in order to participate in hands-on sessions on real equipment located in various geographical locations. These structures are named remote laboratories or on-line laboratories. (Aktan et a.,. 1996; Antsaklis et al, 1999; Domínguez et al., 2001; Dormido, 2002). The main target of these structures is to improve the active learning, so reliable and efficient structures are needed. There are several physical systems with limited connectivity, which are not web-enabled. These systems are old physical systems without TCP/IP NIC´s, such as: industrial robots, PDA´s, modems, remote video cameras or POS (Point Of Sale) terminals. In the last years, robots intended to perform different tasks, such as window glass mounting (Choia, et al., 2005), space exploration (Hubbard, 2005) or laparoscopic aortic reconstruction aided by robots (Nio, et al., 2005), have been designed. The IFR (International Federation of Robotics) reports that installations and operational stock of multipurpose industrial robots grow at 18% annual rate. The IFR estimates 106,300 installations and 997,700 operational stock by 2007 year-end. Those are the reasons why teaching in robotics is necessary. In this paper, an ABB IRB 1400 S4 robot, a model manufactured in 1995, is intended to be connected to the Internet. This robot is intended to be used in a web-based education environment (a remote laboratory is being built at the University of Leon (Dominguez, et al., 2001; Dominguez, et al., 2004; Dominguez, et al., 2005), but the only communication way offered by the robot is a serial port. A structure to solve this limited connectivity will be presented in this paper. This structure suffers from three main disadvantages: a high programming effort is necessary, entirely dependent on operating system and the poor efficiency. At the end of this paper, some conclusions are showed about a future structure more reliable, efficient and flexible.