A human-machine interface for reconfigurable sensor-based control systems

Abstract

The development of software for dynamically reconfigurable sensor-based control systems is a complicated and tedious process, requiring specialization in real-time systems programming and an amount of time which may not be available, for instance, in a space laboratory. The total development time can be reduced by automatically integrating reusable software modules to create applications. The integration of these modules can be further simplified by the use of a high-level programming interface which can integrate modules developed at different sites. We have developed Onika, an iconically programmed human-machine interface, to interact with a reconfigurable software framework to create reusable code. Onika presents appropriate work environments for both application engineers and endusers. For engineers, icons representing real-time software modules can be combined to form real-time jobs. For the end-user, icons representing these jobs are assembled by the user into applications. Onika verifies that all jobs and applications are syntactically correct, non-ambiguous, and complete. They can then be executed from within Onika, or can be saved as a stand-alone program which can be executed independently on the underlying real-time operating system. Onika can retrieve and use software modules created at other sites with modules created locally. While Onika has been fully integrated with the Chimera real-time operating system in order to control several different robotic systems in the Advanced Manipulators Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University, it can also function independently of Chimera. Onika will be used in connection with NASA Langley Research Center's Intravehicular Autonomous Robot (IVAR) space manipulator laboratory.

Decentralized, modular real-time control for machining applications

“…Onika is an on-going project at Carnegie-Mellon University which was built to implement real-time controllers for robots [6]. Onika has a multilevel human-machine interface for real-time sensor-based systems.…”

“…In order to achieve the functionality of the original algorithm these "sub-algorithms" may need to share certain variables that effect coordination. In a uniprocessor or a shared memory multiprocessor environment, the sub-algorithms simply use data stored in memory space shared by all the requisite processes (e.g., see [6]). Regardless of the number of processes accessing the shared variables, they are not replicated.…”

Analysis of performance measures of flexible manufacturing system

“…There are research activities that follow the trend of graphically oriented design of FMS controllers. Good examples are the programs like Onika (Gertz and Khosla, 1994), Robotica (Nethery and Spong, 1994), OpenRob (Ge et al, 2000), and the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB, which are intended for the graphical design of systems for the control of robotized plants and which integrate already existing software modules for control of robot manipulators.…”

Machine-job incidence matrix based analysis of manufacturing systems in time domain

“…Simulation of robotized manufacturing systems has become much easier and more effective with specialized programs for virtualfactory modeling and simulation. Many virtual-factory simulators have origin in the academia [5][6][7][8][9]. Each of these tools has a mathematical core in a form of an algorithm used to describe dynamic behavior of MS elements.…”