APHRODITE: Intelligent Planning, Control and Sensing in a Distributed Robotic System

In this paper we describe a general-purpose robot programming environment APHRODITE1 built at Columbia University’s Center for Research in Intelligent Systems. The environment is based on a distributed multiprocessor architecture that offers great flexibility and computing strength, and provides a reliable real-time response, while using off-the-shelf software tools. The supporting software that we developed supports transparent operation across the network and distributed interupt handling, We define the interface between main hierarchical levels in the system and describe the implementation as it has been used to create a distributed, multi-tasking application. We have implemented a test task that consists of assembly operation that includes compliant motion planning in an uncertain environment and the intelligent monitoring of the assembly process.