Flexible Signal-Oriented Hardware Abstraction for Rapid Prototyping of Robotic Systems

• Published in: 2006 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems pp. 3755 - 3760
• Main Authors: Jorg, S., Nickl, M., Hirzinger, G.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01-10-2006
• Subjects: Application software; Costs; Driver circuits; Hardware; Intelligent robots; Mechatronics; Middleware; Prototypes; Robot control; Signal design
• ISBN: 9781424402588; 1424402581
• ISSN: 2153-0858; 2153-0866
• DOI: 10.1109/IROS.2006.281759

Diffuse and changing specifications for the design of light-weight robots result in high design costs for the desired robotic system, especially the electronic modules and related software drivers. To reduce those costs, we created a flexible robot platform, consisting of FPGA joint modules that are connected by a high speed communication. To fully exploit the hardware flexibility, we introduce a flexible signal-oriented hardware abstraction that is based on a signal flow oriented middleware (SFMiddleware). SFMiddleware enables the transparent integration of changing joint hardware functionality with robot control applications. Utilizing a static system specification approach, we benefit from the abstraction of a middleware without the typical overhead of common middleware implementations. Thus, we achieve a small run-time footprint and control cycles of more than 10 kHz