The ConSERTD effort: a control system environment for real-time decision-making

An environment developed to plan and execute decision-making strategies in real time for the control and coordination of a system comprising several mechanical subsystems is described. The tracking of planned trajectories is decoupled from the planning phase through the use of decentralized controllers which are explicitly designed for trackings. They communicate with a central processor within which resides the framework through which the control engineer can program the task and constraints. The planner uses three types of inputs to determine the control signals: the ultimate goal and the desired mode of reaching the goal which the designer must input (such as minimum time), the constraint set which is also input by the designer and transformed by the planner to linear inequality constraints in the acceleration subspace, and methods of solving the constrained problem to generate desired trajectories. Some examples are presented. The environment permits easy incorporation of other constraints which are planned for the future, such as complaint motion and force control