Flexible Signal-Oriented Hardware Abstraction for Rapid Prototyping of Robotic Systems.

Abstract

Diffuse and changing specifcations for the design of light-weight robots result in high design costs for the desired robotic system, especially the electronic modules and related software drivers. To reduce those costs, we created a fexible robot platform, consisting of FPGA joint modules that are connected by a high speed communication. To fully exploit the hardware fexibility, we introduce a fexible signal-oriented hardware abstraction that is based on a Signal Flow Oriented Middleware (SFMiddleware). SFMiddleware enables the transparent integration of changing joint hardware functionality with robot control applications. Utilizing a static system specifcation approach, we benefit from the abstraction of a middleware without the typical overhead of common middleware implementations. Thus, we achieve a small run-time footprint and control cycles of more than 10 kHz.