Opening the door to new sensor-based robot applications—The Reflexxes Motion Libraries

This paper introduces the Reflexxes Motion Libraries and describes, how they open doors for next generation robot motion controllers. When robots become capable to perform sensor-guided and sensor-guarded motions, there is no predefined path anymore, and motions have to be calculated on-line, that is, during the motion. The Reflexxes Motion Libraries calculate jerk-limited motions within one control cycle only (typically 1ms or less). This way, robots can instantaneously react to unforeseen sensor events, which opens the door to a huge number of new robot capabilities and fundamentally new motion control features. For instance: unforeseen switchings of coordinate frames, unforeseen switchings of control state spaces, deterministic and instantaneous reactions to sensor signals, safe and stable reactions to sensor failures, simple visual servo control, and stable switched-system control. All these features are important for the execution of sensor-based robot motions and to realize new applications as will be outlined in this paper.