A high-sample-rate robot control system using a DSP based numerical calculation engine

A high-sample-rate robot controller has been designed to resolve computational requirements in advanced algorithms, such as the computed torque method or various impedance control algorithms. An active stiffness control algorithm for a six-degree-of-freedom manipulation has been implemented on the controller, and a 1 kHz sampling rate has been achieved. The design assumes no specific algorithm and robot configuration, and it is easy to increase the number of drive joints. The controller is equipped with a general-purpose vector/matrix calculation engine, servo drivers, and a 16-bit microcomputer system. The calculation engine, which accelerates hole computation for advanced control methods, is based on a 13.4 MFLOPS single-chip floating-point digital signal processor (DSP). This engine was developed to simplify DSP programming without degrading its high-performance computation capabilities. Basic vector/matrix functions and general functions for scalar value computation are mask ROMed on the DSP chip. The controller construction and calculation engine functions, and their performance, are addressed