Prototyping Environment for Robot Manipulators


	    Mohamed Dekhil, Tarek M. Sobh, and Thomas C. Henderson



 
                                UUCS-93-021

                               September, 1993


                       Department of Computer Science
                              University of Utah
                       Salt Lake City, UT 84112 USA



                                  Abstract


Prototyping is an important activity in engineering. Prototype development is a
good test for checking the viability of a proposed system. Prototypes can also
help in determining system parameters, ranges, or in designing better systems.
We are proposing a prototyping environment for electro-mechanical systems, and
we chosen a 3-link robot manipulator as an example.  In Designing a robot
manipulator, the interaction between several modules (S/W, VLSI, CAD, CAM,
Robotics, and Control) illustrates an interdisciplinary prototyping environment
that includes different types of information that are radically different but
combined in a coordinated way.  This environment will enable optimal and
flexible design using reconfigurable links, joints, actuators, and
sensors. Such an environment should have the right ``mix'' of software and
hardware components for designing the physical parts and the controllers, and
for the algorithmic control for the robot modules ( kinematics, inverse
kinematics, dynamics, trajectory planning, analog control and computer
(digital) control).  Specifying object-based communications and catalog
mechanisms between the software modules, controllers, physical parts, CAD
designs, and actuator and sensor components is a necessary step in the
prototyping activities.  In this report a framework for flexible prototyping
environment for robot manipulators is proposed along with the required
sub-systems and interfaces between the different components of this
environment.





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This work was supported in part by DARPA grant N00014-91-J-4123, NSF
grant CDA 9024721, and a University of Utah Research Committee grant.  All
opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this document
are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
sponsoring agencies.