Abstract :
Focusing on the manipulation tasks to be executed by humanoid robots, principal requirements which are to be satisfied by hardware/software of the control system are considered. In order to meet the requirements, a novel type of hardware structure and software architecture is proposed. Since the target humanoid robot consists of multiple subsystems such as a central controller for brain, a vision controller for eye, and five motion sub-controllers for two arms, two hands, one spine, the on-board hardware control system is designed to have a distributed control structure connected by pseudo real-time Ethernet interfaces. A goal-achieving software architecture is also proposed which meets the requirements of semi-autonomy, reactivity, expandability, and object-orientedness. Specifically, in order to achieve reactivity, a coordination method is proposed to configure three kinds of executive modules, primitive module, flow-control module, and goal module, which have multiple exit states. The control architecture proposed has been implemented for performing toy-block assembly tasks on a humanoid robot as well as on the graphic simulator
Keywords :
distributed control; learning (artificial intelligence); local area networks; manipulators; object-oriented programming; real-time systems; software engineering; brain; central controller; control architecture; coordination method; distributed control structure; expandability; eye; goal-achieving software architecture; hardware structure; humanoid robot; manipulation task; motion sub-controllers; object-orientedness; pseudo real-time Ethernet interfaces; reactivity; semi-autonomy; toy-block assembly tasks; vision controller; Centralized control; Computer architecture; Control systems; Distributed control; Hardware; Humanoid robots; Manipulators; Motion control; Real time systems; Software architecture;
