Virtual reality simulation for the condition monitoring of robot in fusion reactor application

Abstract

This thesis aims to prepare a 3D simulation environment for the robot in order to be controlled by a PLC TwinCat3. For that a comparison between different 3D simulation environments is made, which could communicate with PLC in real-time. The robot model is taken from a previous master’s thesis carried out by Chanyang Li and the robot model components were designed in SolidWorks. The model components are exported individually and assemble in the new environment. The mathematical model of the robot is derived using inverse kinematics and the offline simulation in the Unreal Engine (UE) approves the equations. Then using the server-client scenario, a PLC module is created in C++ as the server, and a client module is set up in the UE in C++ structure. Then the real-time communication between PLC and UE is stablished and the input variables for the inverse kinematics of the parallel manipulator is provided with the PLC.