Robot skills development using a laser range finder

A wrist-mounted laser range finder is used to develop robot skills. This is an active sensor which projects a spot of laser light that is scanned across a surface measuring the range by triangulation. Interpretation of the data, how the data affect the control loop, and how these steps can be combined to create a required functionality are addressed by a new computational paradigm called SKORP (SKills-Oriented Robot Programming). Robot operations are constructed as a sequence of robot skills. The objective is to develop a computational environment where the real-time systems programming is separate from the application-oriented programming. The application programming environment is iconic, and examples of how the robot operation is specified are shown. The systems programmer develops the skills on a multiprocessor architecture. The development of a skill which uses the range finder in the control loop is described. In this skill an edge on a surface is tracked while the pose of the end effector of the robot is held constant with respect to the edge in five degrees of freedom