UPE: Utah Prototyping Previous:

UPE: Utah Prototyping

Introduction

Prototyping is an important activity in engineering. Prototype development is a good test for checking the viability of a proposed system. Prototypes can also help in determining system parameters, ranges, or in designing better systems. The interaction between several modules (e.g., S/W, VLSI, CAD, CAM, Robotics, and Control) illustrates an interdisciplinary prototyping environment that includes radically different types of information, combined in a coordinated way.

The goal of this research project is to build a framework for optimal and flexible design of robot manipulators with the necessary software and hardware systems and modules. This framework is composed of several subsystems such as: optimal design, simulation, control, monitoring, CAD/CAM modeling, part ordering, and physical assembly and testing. Each subsystem has its own structure, data representation, and reasoning strategy. On the other hand, much of the information is shared among these subsystems. To maintain the consistency of the whole system, an interface layer is proposed to facilitate the communication between these subsystems, and set the protocols that enable the interaction between the subsystems to take place. Figure 1 shows a schematic view of the proposed prototyping environment with its subsystems and interface.