ORiN is a standard network interface for FA systems. The Japan Robot Association proposed ORiN in 2002, and the ORiN Forum develops and maintains the ORiN standard.
Background
The installation of PC applications in the factory is increasing recently. Various types of application software systems, such as production management system, process management system, operation monitoring system and failure analysis system, are operating in the factory. These software systems are becoming indispensable for the manufacturing system. However, most of these software systems are only compatible with specific models or specific manufacturers of the FA system. This is because the software system is “custom made” depending on the specific special network or protocol. Once this type of application is installed in a factory and if there are no resident software engineers for the system, the improvement of the system will stop, the cost-effectiveness of the system will be worsen, and the total value of the system will deteriorate. Another recent problem in production is the rapid increase of the product demand at the initial stage of the product release. The manufactures will lose the chance of possible profit if they cannot meet the demand. To cope with the problem, manufacturing industry is trying to achieve the vertical upstart of the production, and high re-usability of both hardware and software is the key for the goal. To solve these problems, ORiN was developed as a standard PC application platform.
Outline
ORiN was originally developed as a standard platform for robot applications. Nowadays, ORiN became a manufacturing application program platform for handling wider range of resources including robots and other FA devices like programmable logic controllers and numerical control systems, or more generic resources like databases and local file systems. ORiN specifications are on software only and are independent from hardware. Therefore, ORiN can be smoothly integrated with other existing technologies only by developing software. By using ORiN, development of manufacture-independent and model-independent application becomes easy. By utilizing ORiN, various application software development and active multi-vender system construction by third-party companies are expected. In addition, on economy side, increase of manufacturing competitiveness, expansion of FA market, advancement of software industry in FA, and creation of FA engineering industry are also expected.
Features
ORiN is independent from hardware, and all ORiN specifications are for software. ORiN is composed of the following three key technology specifications.
CAO, standard program interface specifications : Specifications to facilitate generalization of application software
CRD, standard data schema specifications : Specifications to facilitate data exchange between application software
CAP, standard communication protocol : Protocol for communication between FA devices and applications Three types of CAP are defined: CAP, e-CAP, b-CAP.
With these three key standard technologies, ORiN provides following features.
ORiN Forum was created in 2002 to promote and advance the ORiN standard.
ORiN Forum member companies participated various ORiN field application tests for three years. The test results were reflected to the ORiN Version 2.0. ORiN2 SDK was released as a supported software product in 2005.
ORiN application was proposed as an annex of ISO20242-Part4. The DIS of the standard was approved in July 2010.
