Concurrent simulation and control of robot tasks

In the area of telerobotics, where remote systems are to be controlled, it is helpful to plan subsequent operations based on as much relevant data as possible. The simulation of the remote system, executed in parallel, can provide additional information, otherwise difficult or impossible to retrieve from sensor feedback. In this paper, the integrated DiSCUS environment (Distributed Simulation and Control in a Unix System) is presented, which is used for the simulation and the control of a small assembly cell. All (physical and logical) components are represented as stand-alone programs, as tasks. These tasks are distributed over a workstation network, so that "true" parallelism can be achieved.<>