A New Computer Board for Distributed Real-Time Motion Control

This article describes a modular computational engine that has become the workhorse for almost all real-time motion control tasks that we encounter in the Yale Robotics Laboratory. Roughly speaking, these tasks amount to the marshalling of various data - from external sensors; from user specified commands; from motor joint variables - and rapid computation involving their appropriate combinations all in time to produce motor commands that will ensure high performance coordinated movement of many coupled mechanical degrees of freedom…