A multiprocessor-based "universal" interface for multisensor-based robotic system

The authors describe the design and implementation of a "universal" interface between a robot controller and a variety of robotic sensors, through which more than one sensor can pass information to the robot\´s controller in a convenient and efficient way with high speed. An attempt is made to solve the bottleneck problem which relates to the way of connecting multiple sensors, especially the low-speed sensors, with the robot controller, without affecting the speed of real-time robot control. This "universal" interface has a high data transfer rate. It can support not only sensors that require extensive numerical data preprocessing but also sensors that produce only analog signals. The extensibility and portability are achieved through the use of a modular design technique. A multiprocessor and a two-layer hierarchical structure are used to achieve the design goals. Special emphasis is place on the multiprocessor system design, the multilevel interrupt control, parallel processing, and shared memory techniques