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Packbot Controlled by Mobius™ |
Under contract
with NSWC Panama City, ASI implemented an improved arm control functionality referred to
by users as ‘flying the manipulator’ on the iRobot Packbot. In this control
scheme, the user controls the manipulator (or end effector) of the robotic arm
as he might fly an airplane: using the camera directly behind the gripper as the
‘cockpit’ view of the craft, the operator uses a joystick to move the gripper up
& down and left & right relative to the gripper rather than the ground.
A second, single degree of freedom joystick or
slider gives in & out (depth) motion. This can be contrasted with the
current method of controlling the arm, in which each joint is controlled by the
user separately. This is less useful, since the user’s real concern in any
real-life situation is the placement of the gripper itself. In ASI's control method, the software calculates commands for the four joints of the arm to move the gripper in the direction the user wants.
This control scheme
was implemented as a module of ASI’s Mobius software, in which the user could
teleoperate the arm through a Mobius Windows interface. ASI implemented full
control of all of Packbot’s functionalities through its Mobius software, using
its handheld Operator Control Unit (OCU).
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