Humanoid robots are highly integrated robotic systems with many sensors and actuators. The DLR Hand Arm system has 52 motors and 430 sensors. Design goal is to operate the robot with high-performance feedback control at cycles beyond 1kHz but to retain the flexibility of prototyping control algorithms. This is achieved with the concept of a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that provides a convenient high-level interface to the entire robotic hardware. The requirements for the design of a HAL in terms of functionality and implementation are presented that improve the integration of complex robot hardware with prototype control applications. Experiments with the HAL of the DLR Hand Arm System demonstrate the high performance of a Simulink Interface implementation. A 3 kHz control loop yields a latency below 333/is and a jitter below 50/xs.

An anthropomorphic hand arm system using variable stiffness actuation has been developed at DLR. It is aimed to reach its human archetype regarding size, weight and performance. The main focus of our development is put on robustness, dynamic performance and dexterity. Therefore, a paradigm change from impedance controlled, but mechanically stiff joints to robots using intrinsic variable compliance joints is carried out. Collisions of the rigid joint robot at high speeds with stiff objects induce the energy too fast for an active controller to prevent damages. In contrast, passively compliant robots are able to temporarily store energy. In this case the resulting internal forces applied to the robot structure and the drive trains are reduced. Furthermore, the energy storage allows to outperform the dynamics of stiff robots. The hand drives and the electronics are completely integrated within the forearm. Extremely miniaturized electronics have been developed to drive the 52 motors of the system and interface their sensors. Several variable stiffness actuation principles used in the arm joints and the hand are presented. The paper highlights the different requirements that they have to fulfill. A first test of the systems robustness and dynamics has been performed by driving nails with a grasped hammer and is demonstrated in the attached video.

The computing and communication architecture of the DLR Hand Arm System is presented. Its task is to operate the robot's 52 motors and 430 sensors. Despite that complexity, the main design goal for it is to create a flexible architecture that enables high-performance feedback control with cycles beyond 1kHz. Flexibility is achieved through a hierarchical net of computing nodes that goes from commercial-of-the-shelf hosts down to the physical interfaces of sensors and actuators. The concept of a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) provides a convenient high-level interface to the entire robotic hardware. First experiments with prototypical control applications, featuring 100 kHz and 3 kHz control loops, demonstrate the performance of the architecture.

Robotic surgery systems are highly complex and expensive pieces of equipment. Demands for lower cost of care can be met if these systems are employable in a flexible manner for a large variety of procedures. To protect the initial investment the capabilities of a robotic system need to be expandable as new tasks arise. To oblige the needs of future robotic support in hospitals, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has developed the versatile robotic system MiroSurge for medical applications. This paper presents a 3 DoF instrument for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery which is mounted to the hollow wrist of the DLR MIRO robot arm. The MICA instrument consists of a versatile drive train and a detachable task specific tool with its tool interface, shaft, 2 DoF wrist, 7 DoF force/torque sensor and the actuated functional end. With the current cable-driven tool, gripping and manipulation forces of above 10 N are feasible and dynamics is high enough for surgery at the beating heart.

This video presents the in-house developed DLR MiroSurge robotic system for surgery. As shown, the system is suitable for both minimally invasive and open surgery. Essential part of the system is the MIRO robot: The soft robotics feature enables intuitive interaction with the robot.

This paper presents a novel system for accurate placement of pedicle screws. The system consists of a new light-weight (<10 kg), kinematically redundant, and fully torque controlled robot. Additionally, the pose of the robot tool-center point is tracked by an optical navigation system, serving as an external reference source. Therefore, it is possible to measure and to compensate deviations between the intraoperative and the preoperatively planned pose. The robotic arm itself is impedance controlled. This allows for a new intuitive man-machine-interface as the joint units are equipped with torque sensors: the robot can be moved just by pulling/pushing its structure. The surgeon has full control of the robot at every step of the intervention. The hand-eye-coordination problems known from manual pedicle screw placement can be omitted

Diffuse and changing specifications for the design of light-weight robots result in high design costs for the desired robotic system, especially the electronic modules and related software drivers. To reduce those costs, we created a flexible robot platform, consisting of FPGA joint modules that are connected by a high speed communication. To fully exploit the hardware flexibility, we introduce a flexible signal-oriented hardware abstraction that is based on a signal flow oriented middleware (SFMiddleware). SFMiddleware enables the transparent integration of changing joint hardware functionality with robot control applications. Utilizing a static system specification approach, we benefit from the abstraction of a middleware without the typical overhead of common middleware implementations. Thus, we achieve a small run-time footprint and control cycles of more than 10 kHz

Recent research in industrial robotics aims at the involvement of additional sensory devices to improve robustness, flexibility and performance of common robot applications. Many different sensors have been developed over the past years to fit the requirements of different but very specific tasks. Special seam tracking sensors support the robot in welding applications. Vision systems are common in quality control and inspection. Force/torque sensors mounted to a robot's wrist are still an exception and limited to the fields of scientific research. Compared to the number of annual robot sales the number of sensor equipped robots is still negligible, although the benefits of sensory feedback are obvious. In this paper we introduce a general approach to tackle the problem of sensor-based robot assembly. We realized a flexible assembly cell that includes a variety of different sensors for mating with moving parts.