Application Example of the NBS Robot Control System

Published

December 31, 1984

Author(s)

L Haynes, Tony Barbera, James S. Albus, M L. Fitzgerald, H Mccain

Abstract

The National Bureau of Standards, Industrial Systems Division, had designed The Robot Control System where high level goals are decomposed through a succession of levels, each producing strings of simpler commands to the next lower level. The bottom level generates the drive signals to the robot, gripper, and other actuators. Each control level is a seperate process with a limited scope of responsibility, independent of the details at other levels, thus providing a foundation for future modular, plug compatible hardware and software for robotics and other real-time sensory interactive control applications. To aid in specifying the required task decomposition and task processing, a programming language and program developing environment has been implemented. Programs at each control level are expressed as state tables, and the programming environment permits the generation, editing, emulation, and evaluation of these state tables. The control system is completely interactive, allowing the system to run freely, or be single-stepped to any level of detail. This paper describes the first application of The NBS Robot Control System in a realistic factory environment, fully integrated with a workstation control system, database system, safety computer, gripper control system, vision system, and network.

Citation

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

RCS

Citation

Haynes, L. , Barbera, T. , Albus, J. , Fitzgerald, M. and Mccain, H. (1984), Application Example of the NBS Robot Control System, Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=820181 (Accessed April 24, 2024)