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"An Integrated Fault Tolerant Robotic Control System for High Reliability
and Safety", Proc. Technology 2004, Washington, DC, November, 1994
This paper describes the concepts and features of a fault-tolerant intelligent robotic
control system being developed for applications that require high dependability
(reliability, availability, and safety).
The system consists of two major elements: a fault tolerant controller and an operator
workstation.The fault tolerant controller uses a strategy which allows for detection
and recovery of hardware, operating system, and application software failures. It
has a recovery time of less than 40 milliseconds, a period short enough for nearly
all real time applications. Protection against higher level unsafe events (e.g.,
collisions) is provided by software resident in a separate operar workstation which
includes features to predict collisions and reduce the human workload thereby reducing
errors and enhancing safety. The fault tolerant controller can be used by itself
in a wide variety of applications in industry, process control, and communications.
The controller in combination with the operator workstation can be applied to robotic
applications such as spaceborne extravehiclar actvities, hazardous materials handling,
inspection and maintenance of high value items (e.g., space vehicles, reactor internals,
or aircraft), medicine, and other tasks where a robot system failure poses a significant
risk to life or property.
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