RoboTalk: controlling arms, bases and androids through a single motion interface

Abstract

Despite several successful humanoid robot projects from both industry and academia, generic motion interfaces for higher-level applications are still absent. Direct robot driver access proves to be either very difficult due to the complexity of humanoid robots, very unstable due to constant robot hardware upgrade and re-design, or inaccessible due to proprietary software and hardware. Motion interfaces do exist, but these are either hardware-specific designs, or generic interfaces that support very simple robots (non-humanoids). Thus, this paper introduces RoboTalk, a new motion interface for controlling robots. From the ground up our design model considers three factors: mechanism-independence to abstract the hardware from higher-level applications, a versatile network support mechanism to enable both remote and local motion control, and an easy-tomanage driver interface to facilitate the incorporation of features by hardware developers. The interface is based on a motion specification that supports a wide range of robotic mechanisms, from mobile bases such as a Pioneer 2 to humanoid robots. The specification allows us to construct interfaces from basic blocks, such as wheeled bases, robot arms and legs. We have tested and implemented our approach on the Honda ASIMO robot and a Pioneer 2 mobile robot.