Computer architecture for grasping

The Integrated Tactile Network Architecture or ITNA is a hierarchical system for managing the interaction of tactile sensing and motor control in the 3-D active sensory environment. The overall ITNA includes custom dedicated hybrid front end tactile arrays incorporating electronics and microprocessors for sensor linearization, tactile information preprocessing, and local feature extraction approaches to the distributed motor control of manipulator fingers for grasping; interconnection networks for guarded movement and reflex arcs; and special purpose hardware for model generation derived from tactile information. This paper primarily addresses the overall ITNA structure and, in particular, the design of an intelligent sensor array and its associated communications subsystem.