A discrete event approach to the automatic command generation in a teleprogramming system

This paper presents a methodology to automatically generate motion commands for the slave robot in the framework of a discrete-event-based teleprogramming system. The teleprogramming system basically requires the geometric model of the work-piece and the constraint environment and additionally the CPN (controlled Petri net) model of the contact state transitions. In order to simplify the modeling procedure, we propose a task coordination scheme, which decomposes a global complex task into several sub-tasks and coordinates them in the execution stage. Each decomposed sub-task is then programmed based on the CPN model as well as the geometric model. Specifically, an algorithm is proposed to automatically generate the CPN model from the geometric model in a simpler planar workspace. The CPN model is down-loaded from the master site to the slave before the teleprogramming of the decomposed sub-task starts. Referring to the prior knowledge represented by the CPN model, the slave system interprets and executes the succeeding symbolic commands that are automatically generated and sent from the master site so as to achieve the sub-task goal.