A new VLSI architecture for real-time control of robot manipulators

A special-purpose VLSI array is proposed for performing the computations of the Jacobian, inverse Jacobian, direct kinematics, and numerical integration for the implementation of a joint-space position and velocity command generator for a real-time robot. This integrated approach enhances computational efficiency by reducing the duplicate calculations of these functions and maximizing the parallel/pipelining processing. The array is connected in a systolic manner to form a 6×7 array using 42 basic processing elements (PEs); 6 `circular´ PEs, 30 `square´ PEs, and 6 `triangular´ PEs. A `square´ PE test chip has been designed and fabricated. The test results for this chip show that the array should be able to operate at a step time of 150 ns. For a six-link manipulator with rotary joints, it takes 156 steps, i.e., 23.4 μs, to complete all the computations in one sampling period