To design a complete and efficient robotics system there is a need for performing a sequence of cascaded tasks. The design task starts by determining the application of the robot, the performance requirements, and then determining the robot configuration and parameters suitable for that application. The physical design starts by ordering the parts and assembling the robot. Developing the required software (controller, simulator and monitor) and hardware elements is the next task. The following stage includes manipulator testing which determines the performance of the robot and the efficiency of the design. Our aim is to build a complete PC-Based software package for control, monitoring and simulation of a 6-DOF manipulator, including a spherical wrist. The design will be independent of any existing specific robot parameters . The package will be an integration of several packages.
Figure 1: Controlling the robot using different schemes
Figure 1 shows how such a pc-based robot can be controlled using different schemes [2].
The idea for this work came from a project has done in a robotics class at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, in the School of Science, Engineering and Technology, University of Bridgeport. The project was to design a full integrated package to control, monitor, and simulate an SIR-1 robot. The SIR-1 robot is a 6 - DOF robot with a gripper. While work was done on that project, we were continuously wishing for the existence of such a prototyping package in the market. We did a wide range search and exhaustive market survey for what was available. We searched a variety of papers, books, book chapters and Internet sites. We have also talked to a number of companies that manufacture manipulators and we found out that reasonable progress has been done in this field. Some of the companies introduce prototyping for special or specific manipulators. Others try to design a whole prototyping package introducing mainly numerical solutions rather than closed form solutions. Unfortunately a generic pc-based controller/monitor/simulator package for a generic manipulator does not exist at this time. Check the following URL's for more information:
http://www.bridgeport.edu/sobhdir/introb/node36.html
http://www.bridgeport.edu/sobhdir/introb/rep.html
http://www.bridgeport.edu/sobhdir/proj/wachter/
http://www.bridgeport.edu/sobhdir/proj/proto/paper.html
Initially it looked like it is impossible to find complete closed form solutions for a 6-DOF robot by solving a complicated set of nonlinear equations. This view is changing nowadays. There is a large number of research papers that scientists produce to find a general form solution for a certain configuration of a robot [1, 6, 7]. If the results of these research papers can be tested and then gathered within a complete and well designed package, the dream of a closed form prototyping controller may be reachable. The variety of powerful mathematical packages available nowadays such as MatLab, Mathematica, Maple, MatCom and others help in achieving our goals. From this point of view, we may be able to find closed form solutions for a 6-DOF robot with a spherical wrist to be the Medicare for the complexity of robot control design.