RCS: The NBS Real-Time Control System

Published

June 7, 1984

Author(s)

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

Abstract

The National Bureau of Standards, Industrial Systems Division designed the Real-Time 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 separate 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 robots and real-time sensory interactive control applications. To aid in specifying the required task decomposition and task processing, a programming language and program development environment were 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.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the Robots 8 Conference and Exposition

Conference Dates

June 4-7, 1984

Conference Location

Detroit, MI, USA

Conference Title

Volume 2 - Future Considerations

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

RCS

Citation

Barbera, T. , Fitzgerald, M. , Albus, J. and Haynes, L. (1984), RCS: The NBS Real-Time Control System, Proceedings of the Robots 8 Conference and Exposition, Detroit, MI, USA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=820167 (Accessed October 27, 2025)