Naresh Rajanna Thesis Abstract

IMPLEMENTATION OF VRTX REAL-TIME DIGITAL PID CONTROLLER FOR A MODULAR RECONFIGURABLE ROBOT
Naresh Rajanna, M.S.
The University of Texas at Arlington, 1998
Supervising Professor: Panayiotis S. Shiakolas

Robot manufacturers around the world develop specific controllers for specific robots. This entails a customer to invest in the
custom hardware and also requires the user to learn software pertaining to the controller. This approach is disadvantageous
in many ways. The premise behind this research is to implement a real-time controller for a modular reconfigurable robot.
The PC-PC real-time digital control system developed at the Automation and Robotics research Institute is used in this
research work. The PC-PC controller for this setup uses a traditional PID control scheme. VRTX real-time operating system
is used. The controller setup consists of two PCs, one for real-time controls and the other for user interface. As these PCs
communicate via the TCP/IP protocol, the robot can be controlled using the internet. The use of PC for robot control provides
ample ways to interface the controller with different data-acquisition components. There is a provision for real-time
monitoring of the control system gains and parameters.

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