NSF Award
8920942
This phase II SBIR project develops a prototype controller capable of enabling robot systems to perform dexterous manipulation in an efficient manner. Currently, robots can perform simple manipulation tasks, but more complex dexterous manipulation tasks cannot be implemented in a real time sense due to the complexity of both the robot dynamics and the controller design. Enhanced computational power is required to implement these real time controllers. In 1985, the Center for Robotic Systems in Microelectronics at the University of California at Santa Barbara developed an operational prototype robotic controller, characterized by a unique architecture, with high performance. The system was denoted Robotic Instruction Processing System (RIPS). Dynamic MicroSystems was organized to bring this new technology to the market place. In a phase I research project, Dynamic MicroSystems evaluated the RIPS architecture for the purpose of developing an architecture which can serve as an industrial platform for advanced robots. This phase II SBIR project's objectives are to (1) develop and build a prototype system comprising a host computer, two three dimensional processor subsystems, and one input output handler, (2) develop and test the proposed multiprocessor programming environment, (3) develop and test the proposed multi-window user interface, and (4) test and validate the complete system with a two arm cooperation simulation experiment. This effort should culminate in the development of a reconfigurable open architecture modular controller system which will satisfy the computational needs for advanced robots, and provide a powerful, flexible, software development and analysis environment.
