Design and implementation of a robot control system using a unified hardware-software rapid-prototyping framework

The application of a unified framework for the rapid prototyping of hardware and software for application-specific systems to the development of a real-time multisensor robot control system is described. The key features of the computer-aided system design methodology offered by this framework are exemplified through this system. The system controls, in real-time, a six-degree-of-freedom articulated robot arm using position, force and proximity sensing. Another key aspect of the robot control system is the extensive use of special-purpose dedicated hardware, which provides better performance than systems that are largely based on general-purpose computers