Static Discharge Disables Robot

[Alan Anderson]

Originally Posted by pfreivald

Uh........ If your electronics are not grounded to your frame -- which you will be required to demonstrate if you wish to pass inspection -- then static discharge to/from your frame should do exactly diddly squat to your control system.

Remember the first week of Lunacy? Before the metal bar in front of the fueling stations was insulated, robots would regularly reset when they came into contact with it and static-zapped themselves.

A brief pulse of extremely high current through the robot frame induces currents in every nearby wire. Unexpected voltages on control or power wires are quite capable of disrupting the control system. There's no way I can think of for an ESD event to just disable the robot, though. It would have to be a full reset of the cRIO, taking 20 seconds or so before it could be reenabled.