Intelligent autonomous robots for industrial and Space applications

The aim of the development of modern robot control systems at the Institute of Robotics Research is to provide higher flexibility and autonomy for robot systems, together with consistent and user-transparent concepts for installation, programming and operation of robots in their working environment. An important feature of a flexible future-oriented robot controller is the capability to incorporate information from different classes of sensors and to have standardized communication interfaces with other factory-automation components. To ease the robot systems´ operation a graphical user-interface is provided. Furthermore, implicit programming and action planning methods allow robot programming on a much higher level of abstraction than today´s procedural programming languages. For industrial applications, this implies easier and quicker adaptation of robot work cells to new tasks and a significant increase of the robots´ flexibility to allow the feasibility of small quantity orders. This paper gives a basic description of “the principle of the hierarchical coordinator”, the basic system concept for the development of complex control systems at the IRF. This concept has been developed and employed for the design of intelligent, autonomous robot systems, which are described in detail. The applications described range from the design of a flexible assembly work cell to a multirobot-system for autonomous experiment-servicing in a space laboratory module