An Architecture for Real-Time Sensory-Interactive Control of Robots in a Manufacturing Facility

Abstract

A hierarchical architecture is described for a robot integrated into a real-time sensory interactive factory control system. In this architecture, high level goals are decomposed through a succession of levels, each producing strings of simpler commands to the next lower level. The bottom level generates the drive signals to the robot actuators. Each control level is a separate process with a limited scope of responsibility. Each performs the generic control function of sampling its input and generating appropriate outputs. The input is characterized by three types of data - a command from the next higher level, processed sensory data, and status feedback from the next lower level. The outputs are of three types - a command to the next lower level, a request for sensory information to the processing module at the same level, and a status feedback to the next higher level. This paper describes this generic control structure and its implementation in a real-time sensory-interactive control system for a manufacturing facility.