Integration of Simulation Tools for Efficient Telerobotic Operations.

Kurzfassung

This paper gives an overview of the integration of different software modules into the Servicing Test Facility (STF) developed by DLR in Oberpfaffenhofen and the resulting modeling and simulation capabilities. The main purpose of the facility is to provide a simulation environment for real-time dynamic simulations, hardware component testing and human teleoperator training. This will give confidence in novel telecontrol technologies and provides the capability to investigate the support needs of the teleoperator in order to perform his task. The general setup of the facility with user interface, computational resources software architecture and hardware equipment of the laboratory is described in this paper. The main focus lies on the overall software architecture and implementation and on the capabilities of the simulation facility. Emphasis is given to the presentation of the efficient data flow management between the different processes running on a total of 4 computer systems. In this context the integration of the software tools within the simulation environment is shown. This includes the task of running complex real-time telerobotic operations and simulations commanded interactively by an operator.