Skeletal motion processor for high speed robotics and graphical computations

A special-purpose Skeletal Motion Processor has been designed for real-time animation of human and animal figure motion. Several kinematic configurations for the lower torso of the human were investigated. The configuration which produced the best results consisted of two kinematically redundant manipulators, each having eight degrees-of-freedom, coupled by the sharing of two joints. The desired solution to the underspecified system of 12 equations and 14 unknowns was obtained using a pseudo inverse with an upper-level supervisory control function. As was expected, a real-time simulation of human skeletal motion was unobtainable with a general-purpose PDP 11/70 computer. With the Skeletal Motion Processor attached to a general-purpose computer, significant computation speed improvements are expected, thus enabling real-time simulation and control of human skeletal motion and robotic manipulator motion. The processor is capable of computing a Jacobian for a 7-link manipulator in 34 μs, and solving a system of six equations and six unknowns in 60 μs.