The Basis of Control-Related Robotics Research - Open High-Rate Low-Level Control Architectures for Industrial Manipulators

In a study and research environment open control architectures are crucial for evaluating new control laws and for multisensor integration. Unfortunately, most commercial robot manufacturers do not provide open control architectures. In order to fill this gap, the Institut für Robotik und Prozessinformatik has a long tradition of building robot control systems. This paper gives a motivation for using open control architectures and introduces two architectures which had been developed at the institute in the last years. Apart from general architecture aspects, it focuses on synchronization approaches for distributed control systems and concrete implementation issues. Experimental results demonstrate the need for high control rates in teleoperation and force control applications.