A multiprocessor-based controller for the control of mechanical manipulators

A cost-effective architecture for the control of mechanical manipulators based on a functional decomposition of the equations of motion of a manipulator are described. The Lagrange-Euler and the Newton-Euler formulations were considered for this decomposition. The functional decomposition separates the inertial, Coriolis and centrifugal, and gravity terms of the Lagrange-Euler equations of motion. The recursive nature of the Newton-Euler equations of motion lend themselves to being decomposed to the terms used to generate the recursive forward and backward equations. Architectures tuned to the functional flow of the two algorithms were examined. An architecture which meets our design criterion is proposed. The proposed controller architecture can best be described as a macro level pipeline, with parallelism within elements of the pipeline. The pipeline is designed to take maximum benefit of the serial nature of the Newton-Euler equations of motion.