We wrote about this, and raised-funding, and worked for years on it. Hell, we even created an extension of ROS for it called the "Hardware Robot Operating System" (H-ROS) that aimed to address many of these issues you describe using ROS as the common language and Programmable Logic (FPGAs) to deal with physical interfaces. More on this at https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8046383.
Problem was that the market didn't really accept it. I still believe on the tech problem landscape in here. I'm just not so sure anymore if there's any real market/business for such a solution. After all, vendor lock-ins are great business, and generate business.
In the PLC space, Beckhoff controllers using commodity x86/64 hardware and standardized IEC 61131 programming languages are gobbling up Rockwell and Siemens' market share.
Given they're perpetually about 20 years behind the times, perhaps this year someone at Fanuc, ABB, Kuka, and Yaskawa will catch up to the year 2002 and read Spolsky's admonition [1] that says:
> Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements.
Stop trying to turn every division of your company into its own product center. I loathe paying $800/year to Rockwell for the privilege of reading "update your firmware" (and subsequently bricking my controller as an unwilling beta tester) on TechConnect. They're a PLC vendor, they should focus on selling PLC hardware, not making their customers hate them by nickel-and-diming them for software licenses and support contracts. They were down for FOUR DAYS this weekend for planned maintenance. FOUR DAYS!
Likewise, Fanuc should focus on selling servos and castings - robotic manipulator hardware - and stop trying to get the training division to turn a profit. If, instead of a 40 hour course costing $2,000, it was free, there would be more people able to use their $40,000 robot arms! If Roboguide software was free instead of $2,650, clients could more efficiently build more robot cells, and sell more yellow paint! Gah!
[1] https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/
A very brief search turned up assorted overviews[1][2][3], and a github topic[4]. The PLCopen standard[5] is paywalled - only $400 single user, with low low per-seat multipliers! :/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_61131-3 [2] https://dc-us.resource.bosch.com/media/us/products_13/produc... [3] https://www.controleng.com/articles/which-iec-61131-3-progra... [4] https://github.com/topics/iec61131-3 [5] https://plcopen.org/iec-61131-3
> it's legacy product support and ease of onboarding new hires.
I don't see how academia can help with this, this so very much an industry problem.
> But I need these to be accessible by Billy Joe, whose only credentials that got him the job in the maintenance department is that he helped out his daddy working with a welder and an old clapped-out Bridgeport on the farm growing up.
While accessible interfaces and forms of human-computer interactions are researched by academia, they are not building products. Research has to be relevant, but it's still research. Those problems, they might be better addressed by a startup than academia, if that's even realistic. Academia can't solve a problem if it's not a research-problem.
Any given cell may be in production for 10 years - some only for 5, but some for 20 or more - and you need <24 hour response times to any mechanical issues that may arise over that duration. Also, one can't expect that the original programmer will be available to diagnose and debug issues that arise in the field after a year or two, so you need a large pool of technicians and maintenance personnel that can understand the software and be productive in the first hour after being introduced to the machine. None of this is valued by academics, instead, the fundamentals of the process of a single lab trying to prove merit as PhD students and, once that credential is acquired, move on to greener pastures is anathema to both of these ideas.
The problem is that academia is working in ROS (now ROS 2), writing Python and VHDL, while the real work in the industry is being done in proprietary vendor tooling that's backwards compatible with training from the 80s. They're proudly advertising touchscreens and full-color 5.7" displays on their teach pendants, as if their customers were still 20 years in the past.
Yes, academia, I do want sub-millimeter repeatability, and flawlessly smooth motion planning. I want collision detection that accommodates both the inertia of the arm itself and any end-of-arm tooling, including cable harnesses with distributed loads. I want automatic singularity avoidance and trivial point and frame manipulation. I want 24-bit encoders for resolution, and I want angular velocities to the moon, and to make those work together I need servo loop rates and high-speed skip responses at 1, 2, or 10 kHz. I want 4D stop position prediction to avoid intersection of the robot arm with complex assemblies and safety zones imported from CAD. I want all these things cheaper and faster, with more storage.
But I need these to be accessible by Billy Joe, whose only credentials that got him the job in the maintenance department is that he helped out his daddy working with a welder and an old clapped-out Bridgeport on the farm growing up. Billy is probably my best tech on 3rd shift, and he's never learned to type on a full-size keyboard, just his smartphone... and on a robot teach pendant.