Experimental study of two robot arms manipulating large objects

In this paper, we present the architecture of an experimental real-time control system called TRACS (two robotic arm coordination system) and experimental results using two PUMA 250 robot arms that perform tasks of manipulating large objects. The system uses an IBM PC-AT as the host computer which is equipped with an AMD29000 high speed floating point coprocessor. It is configured in such a way that the Intel 80286 processor performs all the input-output interface operations (interface to the sensors, arms, and user) while the AMD29000 carries out the real-time computations of feedback control algorithms. Using the system, we have successfully implemented the dynamic control algorithm developed for coordinating two robotic arms. The two arms perform the task of manipulating a large object by means of enveloping grasp. The coordinated control algorithm utilizes the full dynamics of the two arms. The results from two experimental tasks are described in detail, in which the two arms move an object while adapting the grasp configuration to the motion trajectory and to the external disturbance force. >