Systems design for robot control with a scalar supercomputer

A system design is described for robotics research, including rapid program development and concurrent and post execution analysis. The system design supports robotic systems controlling 24 or more joints at a 1-kHz servo rate, suitable for controlling ensembles of advanced arms or hands. The system performs trajectory generation, kinematics, dynamics, force control, and advanced servo algorithms at the servo rate. The JIFFE robotics processor provides the computational power, performing 20 MFlops on robot control algorithms written in C. A sophisticated semiautonomous interface card for eight joints, designed to minimize system latency, is also described. A multiprocessor PUMA controller was ported onto this architecture. The reduced code requirements and the performance, featuring a 56-μs sensor/actuator latency, are described