An Open-architecture Robot Controller applied to Interaction Tasks

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Many current robotic applications are limited by the industry state of art of the manipulators control algorithms. The inclusion of force and vision feedbacks, the possibility of cooperation between two or more manipulators, the control of robots with irregular topology will certainly enlarge the industrial robotics applications. The development of control algorithms to this end brings the necessity of using open-architecture controllers. Generally the robotic controllers are developed for position control, without accomplishing integrally the requirements of tasks in which interactions with the environment occur. Therefore, this is currently one of the main research areas in robotics, e.g., in (Abele et al., 2007) is presented the identification of characteristics to an industrial robot to execute machining applications. To consider this interaction the robot controller has to give priority to the force control time response, because in the instant of end-effectors contact with the surface, several forces act on the system. Depending on the speeds and the accelerations involved in the process, damages or errors can occur. To avoid these effects, compliances are inserted in tool or in surface of operation. A new reference model for a control system functional architecture applied to openarchitecture robot controllers is presented. Where, this model is applied for integrally development of a five-layer based open-architecture robotic controller for interaction tasks, which uses parallel and distributed processing techniques, avoiding the necessity of compliance in system, allowing a real-time processing of the application and the total control of information. This architecture provides flexibility, the knowledge of all the control structures and allows the user to modify all controller layers. The used controller conception aims to fulfill with the following requirements: high capacity of processing, low cost, connectivity with other systems, availability for the remote access, easiness of maintenance, flexibility in the implementation, integration with a personal computer and programming in high level. 5