Condor: a revised architecture for controlling the Utah-MIT hand

A fast architecture for controlling the Utah-MIT hand and other such complex robots is reviewed. These robots are characterized by a large number of joints and consequently demand powerful computer architectures to be controlled and utilized effectively. The version of the architecture derives its power from a novel bus-to-bus adaptor to couple a development host running a time-sharing operating system with a multimicroprocessor system devoted to real-time computations. The software is characterized by a few simple design concepts but provides the facilities out of which powerful utilities like a multiprocessor pseudoterminal emulator, a transparent fast file server, and a truly flexible powerful symbolic debugger could be constructed