This paper describes a transputer-based parallel controller that was developed in the Center for Intelligent Systems at Vanderbilt University to control the Soft Arm robot. The Soft Arm robot is used in a robotic aid system, called ISAC, for the physically challenged. The controller uses a network of T800 transputers as the parallel processing nodes. The controller is composed of a master node,...

We have accelerated a robust model-based 3D tracking system by programmable graphics hardware to run online at frame-rate during operation of a humanoid robot and to efficiently auto-initialize. The tracker recovers the full 6 degree-of-freedom pose of viewable objects relative to the robot. Leveraging the computational resources of the GPU for perception has enabled us to increase our tracker’...

We have designed a snake robot, a hyper-redundant serial linkage of many actuators, that uses a modular architecture. Our design considers size, power, weight, and trade-offs among these criteria. We chose a modular architecture to allow a single joint design to simply be repeated to achieve the sixteen degrees-of-freedom (DOF) the robot normally consists of. At the core of the module is the “S...

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have emerged as the platform of choice for the rapid prototyping and testing of hardware circuits. The dynamic creation of hardware circuits in FPGAs provides an efficient mechanism for customizing the hardware for specific task objectives. The ability of these devices to be reprogrammed during run-time enables the hardware circuitry to adapt to changing t...

The rising number of the elderly incurs growing concern about healthcare, and in particular rehabilitation healthcare. Assistive technology and assistive robotics in particular may help to improve this process. We develop a robot coach capable of demonstrating rehabilitation exercises to patients, watch a patient carry out the exercises and give him feedback so as to improve his performance and...

This paper presents a programmable logic-based agent control system that interleaves planning, plan execution and perception. In this system, a program is a collection of logical formulae describing the agent’s relationship to its environment. Two such programs for a mobile robot are described — one for navigation and one for map building — that share much of their code. The map building progra...

The international standard MMS (Manufacturing Message Specification) is an OSI application layer messaging protocol origionally designed for the remote control and monitoring of devices such as Remote Terminal Units (RTU), Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), Numerical Controllers (NC), or Robot Controllers (RC). It provides a set of services allowing the remote manipulation of variables, prog...

Project Herbert is an autonomous robotic Rubik’s Cube solver that is composed of a complex network of mechanical and electrical devices. In this project our team interfaced with these complex mechanical and electrical devices so as to design and create an autonomous robot that is capable of solving a Rubik’s cube within two minutes of time. This project is an integration of various technologies...

Title Type neural network control of robot manipulators and non-linear systems series in systems and control PDF neural network control of nonlinear discrete-time systems automation and control engineering PDF conservation biological control neural network systems techniques and applications PDF guide to industrial control systems ics security supervisory control and data acquisition scada syst...

Purpose – Service robots need to be programmable by their users who are in general unskilled in the art of robot programming. We have explored the use of spoken language for programming robots. Design/methodology/approach – Two applications domains were studied: that of route instructions and that of game instructions. The latter is work in progress. In both cases work started by recording verb...