The CS language concept: A new approach to robot motion design

Current robot control techniques are primarily concerned with position control and recently also with force control, where a motion planner is used primarily to compute set point changes. The actual control system is fixed and internal, and cannot be modified easily through software. Current robot languages are also limited in their ability to specify changes to the control structure. For compliant motion, such as assembly, one needs more flexibility in the control system; i.e. an ability to tailor the controller to the task. In this paper, we develop a high level CS language (Control System) which allows one to specify compliant control tasks as vector equations and inequalities which relate sensed and controlled variables, e.g. f?? ?? v?? = 0 and f?? ?? v?? = 0??. We show how such requirements can be reformulated as an objective function of an optimization process subject to constraints arising from the dynamic equations involved. Specifically for the two examples above, we show how such requirements can be reformulated as quadratic objective functions and solved using standard linear optimization theory for linear dynamic systems. Five examples are presented to illustrate the various ideas.