The authors describe a fully implemented computational architecture (CONDOR) that controls the Utah-MIT dexterous hand and other complex robots. The architecture derives its power from the highly efficient real-time environment provided for its control processors, coupled with a development host that allows flexible program development. By mapping the memory of a dedicated group of processors into the address space of a host computer, efficient sharing of system resources between them is possible. The software is characterized by a few simple design concepts but provides the facilities out of which more powerful utilities such as a multiprocessor pseudo-terminal emulator, a transparent and fast file server, and a flexible symbolic debugger could be constructed.>

A fast architecture for controlling the Utah-MIT hand and other such complex robots is reviewed. These robots are characterized by a large number of joints and consequently demand powerful computer architectures to be controlled and utilized effectively. The version of the architecture derives its power from a novel bus-to-bus adaptor to couple a development host running a time-sharing operating system with a multimicroprocessor system devoted to real-time computations. The software is characterized by a few simple design concepts but provides the facilities out of which powerful utilities like a multiprocessor pseudoterminal emulator, a transparent fast file server, and a truly flexible powerful symbolic debugger could be constructed.>

This paper presents a fast and efficient way to compute the mapping from a desired external force on a grasped object to the joint torques of a multi-jointed, multi-fingered dexterous hand. The efficiency derives from avoiding the use of any Jacobian. The algorithm models contacts as point contacts with friction and works for three or four-fingered dexterous hands.

This paper provides an overview of the hardware and software systems developed for the Utah-MIT dextrous hand. It builds on the issues raised in an earlier paper [Siegel et al. 1985]. An innovative task scheduling system and a new implementation of our message-passing based inter-task communication system are discussed. Finally, an application program using this system to implement hand-level primitive operations is presented.

This paper presents the computational architecture for the Utah-MIT hand, and discusses design issues encountered in its hardware and software development. The large number of linkages, actuators, and sensors offers a potentially severe computational burden for control; a multiprocessor hardware configuration has been developed to distribute this computation. In the interests of efficiency, minimal operating systems were devised for each processor which nevertheless were made sufficiently general for task scheduling, intertask communication, and debugging. This computational architecture is a general system which is potentially useful for other robotics applications.