A transputer based flexible robot controller

Development of advanced robot applications often require more complex controllers than conventional industrial robots. It is often advantageous to be able to employ different methods of control to a system utilising a single control computer, this enables direct and immediate comparisons of performance to be undertaken and experiments made with changing control schemes 'on the fly'. This paper examines the development of a flexible robot controller based on the T9000 Transputer architecture which enables rapid re-configuration to be undertaken.