In accordance with the present invention, systems and methods for creating a universal bridge controller interface that provides a unified and common set of commands between a host machine and a peripheral machine or robot. The universal bridge controller may simplify the ability to integrate, synchronize, and coordinate the control and operation of various machines. This may be beneficial to companies wishing to implement cost saving automation techniques to a variety of machines built by different manufacturers. The advantage of this approach is that it may allow for a single hardwired link to be created between the machine and the bridge controller allowing for robot integration over a factory network, creating a high level of portability of robots between machine work cells.

A subordinate device participates in address assignment through iterative communication with a host device. The subordinate device receives a first broadcast command over a multidrop serial bus, decouples a daisy chain input of the subordinate device from a daisy chain output of the subordinate device, receives a second broadcast command over the multidrop serial bus, responds to the second broadcast command when a signal received through the daisy chain input is in an active state, ignores the second broadcast command when the signal received through the daisy chain input is in an inactive state, and ignores subsequent broadcast commands after responding to the second broadcast command. Responding to the second broadcast command includes configuring a unique device identifier of the subordinate device using an address provided in the second broadcast command, and coupling the daisy chain input of the subordinate device to the daisy chain output of the subordinate device.