Intelligent control system of a robot with dextrous hand

Abstract

The paper deals with the control architecture and algorithms of a system consisting of a Puma 560 robot and a three-fingered (9 degree-of-freedom) robot hand. The whole control system is divided into three subsystems. The first subsystem is the robot control system consisting of a host PC with power electronics and three special boards containing DSPs. The ARPS robot programming language runs on the host PC. The second subsystem is the control system of the tendon-driven TUB dextrous hand based on a PC with special analog cards. The control programs are running under QNX real-time operation system. The third subsystem is a low-cost stereo vision system consisting of a PC with Windows NT, a video blaster card and three CCD matrix cameras. Different types of intelligence (expert knowledge, graphic simulation, stereo image processing, advanced control algorithms) are distributed in the components of the whole control system.