SEQUENTIAL AND PARALLEL REAL-TIME SIMULATION OF A FLEXIBLE MANIPULATOR SYSTEM

This paper presents an investigation into the utilisation of sequentia l and parallel processing techniques for the real-time simulation of a flexible manipulator system. A finite dimensional simulation of the s ystem is developed using a finite difference approximation to the gove rning dynamic equation of the manipulator. The developed algorithm is implemented on a number of uni-processor and multi-processor, homogene ous and heterogeneous, parallel architectures. A comparison of the res ults of these implementations is made and discussed, on the basis of r eal-time processing requirements in the simulation and control of flex ible manipulator systems.