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.