Development of a reusable top-level control architecture for a robotic manipulator

Abstract

The capabilities of a robotic system are strongly constrained by the capabilities of its control software. The development of this software represents a substantial fraction of the development effort of the overall system, due in part to the difficulty of reusing software written for previous robotic applications. A reusable software control architecture therefore has enormous potential to expedite the development and reduce the cost of this development process. This thesis presents a component-based reusable architecture for the top-level control of a robotic manipulator, developed within the Open Robot Control Software (Orocos) framework. This framework enables the development of software components that are applicable to a variety of robotic manipulators. The software is implemented on an existing manipulator platform as a demonstration of basic functionality. Simulations are conducted to verify adaptability to other kinematic arrangements.