Parallel processing of robot arm dynamic control computation on multimicroprocessors

The paper reviews research on parallel processing of robot arm control computation, which has attracted much attention to develop a cost-effective, compact and advanced controller that allows the robot system to perform complicated operations quickly and accurately in various environments, such as in space or on the ocean floor. Many parallel processing hardware and software schemes have been proposed, especially for dynamic control computation, which allow a robot arm to trace a desirable path quickly and accurately. Among this research, that relating to multimicroprocessor systems, and which will soon be put to practical use, is described in this paper. Several parallel processing schemes for a robot arm dynamics computation based on the Newton-Euler equations, which is known to be the most efficient algorithm, are detailed.