DISTRIBUTED CONTROL ARCHITECTURE FOR A SENSOR-DRIVEN DUAL ARM SYSTEM

A distributed computing and control architecture for sensor-based cont rol of a dual arm system is described. The system comprises of two PUM A 560 robots with state-of-the-art joint-level motion controllers with accurate joint position and velocity measurement, an accurate joint c alibration system, and six-axis wrist force/torque sensors with optica l fiber communication with the controller. A Silicon Graphics workstat ion, through a shared memory interface with the joint-level controller s, provides a task-level command and control capability. A computer vi sion system, with two CCD (Charge-Coupled Device) cameras, is also int erfaced to the workstation. A variety of control schemes may be implem ented on this system. A servo rate of 1000 Hz, without interpolation, has been achieved for task-level servo schemes with force feedback. Th e experimental results presented here demonstrate the performance capa bilities of the system.