The design and manufacture of the robot is completed and the required parts (motors, actuators, and sensors) are now assembled. The manufacture and assembly process of the links, mechanical, and electrical parts were done at the Advanced Manufacturing Laboratory (AML) in our computer science department. The last link will be either revolute or prismatic, so that the robot can be set in different configurations.
There are three different motors to drive the three links, and six sensors (three for position and three for velocity), to read the current position and velocity for each link to be used in the feedback control loop.
This robot can be controlled using analog control by interfacing it with an analog PID controller, and monitoring its behavior an oscilloscope. Digital control is used by interfacing the robot with either a workstation (SUN, HP, etc.) or a PC via the standard RS232. This requires an A/D and D/A chip to be connected to the workstation (or the PC) and an amplifier that provides enough power to drive the motors. Figure 7 shows an overall view of the different interfaces and platforms that can control that robot.
