Unified force and motion control using an open system real-time architecture on a 7 DOF PA-10 robot

The operational space formulation provides a framework for the analysis and control of robotic systems with respect to interactions with their environments. Using the modified PA-10, we implemented unified force and motion control to achieve force and position tracking. Impact control algorithm has also been implemented to remove oscillation when the end-effector comes into contact with stiff environment. The control algorithm uses a PC to perform the required complex realtime computation. Coupled with the modification to the PA-10 controller, we are able to achieve high sampling rates with minimum communication latency which is crucial for our application. A software architecture was also developed which uses the concept of device drivers to achieve modularity in a realtime subsystem environment