The ISO Technical Committee (TC) 299 Working Group (WG) 6 is going to change its name to “Modularity of robots” indicating that the scope does not cover only service robots. The group develops the ISO 22166 series of documents. This standard series should help to develop hardware and software modules, which are compatible and interoperable. The first released standards of this document series are somehow academic. However, the next level of documents will specify robot modules in more technical detail. One of the standardized items will be the communication between robot modules. CANopen CC is a candidate as well as other communication technologies. I will participate in the WG and contribute to the embedded communication specifications for different kinds of robot modules. Such hardware devices could be simple modules such as actuators or sensors as well as composed modules such as complete motion subsystems or sensor-fusion subsystems for navigation, etc.

Companies developing and producing (hardware and software) modules for robots including AGVs (automated-guided vehicles) and AMRs (autonomous mobile robots) are invited to participate directly in the ISO TC299 WG6 or to do this remotely by CiA. If there are more than three CiA members interested to support this standardization project (ISO 22166 series), CiA could establish a dedicated Special Interest Group (SIG). This SIG could comment the ISO documents and I would submit them as well as additional feature requests to the ISO working group.

In the moment, the ISO working group is mainly participated by experts from China, Japan, and Korea as well as United Kingdom. The scope of the ISO committee excludes toy robots and combat robots. It includes any kind of industrial, healthcare, and service robots. Robotic exoskeletons are covered, too. These are mechanical systems worn by a human being for certain purposes. An exoskeleton is generally considered to be a hard mechanical frame with joints that allow movement of the human operator.

The CiA office is also ready to organize a workshop on modularity of robots, in order to provide some more detailed information about the ISO 22166 series as well as the option to connect robot modules by means of CAN-based communication systems, especially CANopen CC (classic) and CANopen FD. If you desire such a workshop or you are interested in participating in a dedicated SIG, please send an email to CiA office.