EXPLORING A SUPERVISORY CONTROL SYSTEM USING ROS2 AND IOT SENSORS

Whether collecting data from process monitoring sensors or controlling a system of multiple actuators and electrical systems, a powerful supervisory control system must be developed for additive manufacturing (AM) systems. The Robot Operating System version 2 (ROS2) is a set of software libraries that can be used to control robotics systems and has tools for sensor value publishing. This research project is exploring the use of computational nodes connected to process monitoring sensors and robotic or electrical systems to allow for a more in-depth knowledge of the system health and process as well as open the possibilities of process control. These nodes can be connected and controlled by the ROS2 architecture. Work will be discussed exploring the reliability and speed of common AM processes and sensors such as robot controllers and thermal monitoring.