Robot skills development using a laser range finder

One of the sensors being used to develop robot skills is a wrist-mounted laser ranger finder. This is an active sensor which projects a spot of laser light that is scanned across a surface measuring the range by triangulation. The scanning range finder and its calibration are described. Acquiring reliable and accurate data is only one step toward increased robot capabilities. Interpretation of the data, how the data affects the control loop, and how these steps can be combined to create a required functionality are addressed by a new computational paradigm called SKORP. Robot operations are described in terms of a sequence of robot skills, which may be reused in other operations. The objective is to develop a computational environment where the realtime systems programming using sensor data is separate from the application-oriented programming. The application level programming environment is iconic, and examples are shown of how the robot operation is specified at this level. The systems programmer develops the skills on a multiprocessor architecture. This level of the SKORP paradigm is exemplified by describing the development of a skill which uses the wrist-mounted range finder to follow an edge on an undulating surface while maintaining the orientation of the wrist-mounted range finder constant with respect to the edge in five degrees of freedom.