ROS-Unity3D based system for monitoring of an industrial robotic process

Planning and monitoring the manufacturing of high quality one-of-a-kind products are challenging tasks. In the implementation of an industrial system, the commissioning phase is typically comprised of a programming phase and an optimization phase. Most of the resources are commonly invested in the optimization of the process. The time and cost of the implementation can be reduced if the monitoring system is not embedded in the industrial process, but kept instead as a decoupled task. In this paper we present a framework to simulate and execute the monitoring task of an industrial process in Unity3D, without interfering with the original system. The monitoring system is made of external additional equipment and is decoupled from the industrial task. The monitoring robot's path is subject to multiple constraints to track the original process without affecting its execution. Moreover, the framework is flexible thanks to the Unity-ROS communication so that the monitoring task can be carried on by any ROS-compatible device. The monitoring system has been applied to a robotic system for heavy, multi-pass TIG welding of voluminous work-pieces. The results of the implementation show that the constraints for monitoring were satisfactory in the 3D environment and capable for real robot application.