Very interesting topic indeed! Thanks @machinekoder for bringing it up and @fkromer for referring to our previous work (we will release before ROSCon a follow up on that!).
We actually looked at a somewhat similar idea a while ago and have an inhouse prototype that interfaces with two of the most common collaborative robots seamlessly (in our opinion, @shaun-edwards is indeed right about the opportunity here). From a modularity perspective (which is what we’re mostly interested in), such a concept (an Open Source (Industrial and generic) Robotics Controller) is something very appealing but we did not obtain good input from the robot vendors we spoke with (which I guess was expected).
We already expressed this to @machinekoder directly but to motivate others to contribute, we from Erle Robotics wouldn’t mind allocating some resources and contributing with such a project.
E.g.: if there were to be enough interest, we could produce a limited number of our existing prototype of generic robot controller and distribute it to those interested parties.