Abdur Rosyid's Blog
Just a few notes on mechanical engineering and robotics
As robotics is interdisciplinary, or in other words: a robot is built by involving various engineering skills and knowledge, here I will list several important knowledge and skills required for robotics by classifying them into their engineering branches. Knowledge and skills from mechanical engineering: The critical knowledge and skills include basic knowledge in kinematics and …
Probably quite many people, particularly common people (i.e. people not working in the field), have partial or incomplete understanding about robotics. Of course robotics is related to robots, a word coined in 1920 with meanings associated with labor and was firstly used to denote a fictional humanoid. Although a robot can refer to either a …
Telecommunications and computer/device network communications can be broadly divided into three types: simplex, half duplex, and full duplex. The simplex communication means one-way communication. It’s like a one-way road. The communication can only be performed in one direction all the time. For example, communication between mouse and keyboard to computer (the mouse and keyboard always …
The communication can be broadly divided into serial and parallel communications. In the basic scheme of serial communication, only one wire, in addition to the ground wire, is used to transmit the bits from the sender to the receiver. Every bit is transmitted one by one in a sequential manner. There are two types of …
Three common protocols used in automation are serial fieldbus-based, Ethernet-based, and wireless. To perform better than the standard serial fieldbus and Ethernet communication protocols, some companies have developed some custom protocols for industrial automation purpose. Historically, industrial automation widely used serial fieldbus-based communication protocols in its earlier times. Although these serial fieldbus-based protocols have been …
The communication protocols are standardized by ISO in a scheme called the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. The OSI model structures the communication protocols into seven layers as shown in the following table. In other words, there are various communication protocols which can be at any of the seven layers. For example, Ethernet is a …
Based on the number of loop, a parallel mechanism can be either single-loop or multi-loop. Based on the dimension, a parallel mechanism can be either planar or spatial. Based on the symmetry of the limb topology, a parallel mechanism can be either symmetric or non-symmetric. Another common classification of parallel mechanisms is based on the …
PLC vs DCS Programmable logic controller (PLC) is widely used in industry. It is typically used in a small-scale system to control multiple devices in a centralized manner, i.e. one PLC controls multiple components. Distributed Control System (DCS), as implied by the name, implements a decentralized control architecture such that a failure in one sub-system …
Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) is a famous control unit and widely used in industry. It has been initially used for discrete control, i.e. ON and OFF control. The domain of use is wide, from a simple flip-flop light to flow or process control. It was made at the first place to replace relay- and timer-based …