A Command Language for Multiple Robot Arm Coordination

A high-level robot command language has been developed as an extension to the C programming language and the UNIX^TM operating system. It provides a common interface for programming three robot arms made by two different manufacturers and sharing a common work space. This command language allows task description in Cartesian coordinates and it makes concurrency of the movements of the arms transparent to the user. Simultaneous movement of the three arms is obtained by creating different background processes running in parallel under the UNIX system. Synchronization commands are included in the language to allow coordination of the movements of all three arms. The language can be used either in a compiled mode where a task can be described by a sequence of commands, or in an interpreted mode with each command executed immediately. It is convenient to use for both teaching and research, and it can be easily integrated with a vision system. It is also easily transferable to other Unix systems and it can be expanded to include other robot arms.