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Low level robot control Architecture

Control of complex robotic systems is a difficult task not least because there are a wide range of sensors and actuators which must be interfaced with to achieve the level of control required. In many scenarios real time performance is required so as critical systems such as joint position control can operate effectively. Low level control systems must be able to provide this level of control while continuously providing feedback to higher level systems as well as receiving commands from it. Currently there exists no generally accepted, clearly defined means of achieving this. The research being conducted by this group aims to establish such a system.

A number of general purpose input output boards are located on the robot. These are responsible for directly interfacing with sensors and actuators as well as taking input commands. The boards are general enough so that they can be used for a wide variety of sensing and actuation tasks throughout the robot. A microcontroller is situated on each to run its control procedure. The boards communicate with each other, as well as a master module using the CAN communications protocol which has proven highly reliable for low bandwidth signals. The master module is a microprocessor which computes more computationally intensive elements of the low level control strategy, such as inverse kinematics. It also passes feedback from the low level system to higher level control components and sends control signals to the general purpose boards.

This architecture is undergoing intense development with the planned addition of EtherCat capabilities, centralised updating of the firmware on the general purpose boards and more capable microcontrollers on the boards.


A general schematic of the low level system