Virtual Devices and Intelligent Gripper Control in Robotics

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper is concerned with the design of intelligent subsystems that interface actuators and sensors to intelligent supervisors for robot work-cells. Benefits of our approach include removal of low level computation and stringent real-time constraints from the superviser, potential for combining and interpreting information from sensor combinations, and provision of a uniform information interface for disparate devices. Our approach to the design and organisation of these subsystems is based on the concept of virtual devices . We demonstrate the applicability of the concept by describing the design and implementation of an intelligent controller for a sensory gripper.