Multiprocessing control of robotic systems

An approach is described for design and development of robotic system controllers. The technique, referred to as multiprocessing control, can provide more expansibility, flexibility, and portability in a robotic system than conventional multiprocessor methods. The control algorithms for a Mitsubishi robot are implemented as a multiprocessing system on a VME-bus-based computer running the PDOS operating system. The control software is written entirely in a real-time C and consists of concurrent tasks synchronized with events, semaphores, and messages. A proposal for implementing the technique as a hardware-independent software on the Inmos Transputer is given