As the possible applications for personal robots increase and involve more complicated environments and tasks, they need more appropriate control architectures. Previous control architectures have fixed configurations that are optimized for specific applications or with limited flexibility. Consequently, they fail to provide the flexibility needed for various robot kinematical configurations as well as various tasks. To this end, we propose a new task-based control architecture called "supervised hybrid architecture (SHA)". SHA is based on supervised organization and distributed arbitration of hybrid controls of reconfigurable deliberative and reactive modules. It is composed of upper level hybrid control for high-level intelligence to interact with human and to plan tasks, as well as lower level hybrid control to allow low-level intelligence for prompt reaction in each robot configuration module. Through these double layers of the hybrid controller, we could provide the flexibility needed for so many different kinematical configurations and tasks. In addition, it is very easy to add or remove robot configuration modules. The proposed architecture are implemented and tested to show how it works successfully.

It is well known that the attitude control of an object hanging with wire is not easy by using usual actuators. Even though an actuator such as a fan can be used for controlling the object it is difficult to meet the desired control objective. For these reasons, we propose a gyro actuator constructed with two motors. The first motor is responsible for spinning the wheel at high speed and the second motor is used to turn the outer gimbal. By applying the torque to the second motor, which results in the turn of the outer gimbal, the torque about the vertical axis can be obtained while the wheel of the gyro is spinning constantly. This torque is used to control the attitude of the object attached. The aim of this paper is to derive the transfer function of the actuator and show the usefulness. Experiments to the prototype model using a state feedback control and PID control are conducted to show the usefulness of the proposed gyro actuator.

A process control language for an automated pager manufacturing system and its implementation are dealt with. The pager manufacturing process consists of the tuning process in the tune TEM-cell and the examination process in the exam TEM-cell. Three capacitor trimmers are tuned to optimize the state of the pager in the shielding box, we call it the TEM-cell, using small motors, pneumatic actuators and sensors. In the exam TEM-cell equipped with a CCD camera and pneumatic actuators, message receiving status with an arbitrary message calling is tested using a vision system. For both tuning and examination process, 37 process control commands are defined by analyzing the manual pager manufacturing process. Project editors are used to make a process description command file, we call it the project file, are also presented. The system is composed of a desktop personal computer(PC586) and two TEM-cells, two Flex pager testers, an oscilloscope, a camera sensor and actuators controlled by 5 Lonwork controllers. Visual Basic running on the Windows 95 is used to implement the control software which has the GUI function. The effectiveness of the completed control program is shown by the field test with the machine developed at KITECH, Korea, which is now ready for production.

Control of a biped robot which has compliant ankle joints is dealt in this paper. Simulated version of a human ankle joint is built using springs and mechanical constraints, which gives a flexibility of joint and compliance against the touching ground. The biped robot with compliant ankle joints proposed here gives a good contact between its sole and the ground and makes foot landing soft. As a result, installing force sensors for measuring the center of gravity of the biped becomes easier. A motor to drive an ankle joint is not needed which makes legs light. However, the control problem becomes more difficult because the torque of the ankle joint to put the biped in a desired walking gait cannot be provided from the compliant ankle joint. To solve this problem, we proposed a dynamic gait modification method by adjusting the position of a hip joint. Simulation results for the mathematical model of the SD-2 biped in the Ohio State University are given to show the validity of the proposed controller.

Power reduction in the ankle joints of a biped robot is considered in this paper. The ankle of human being has small torque and is very flexible within a certain range (very stiff near and beyond this range). This characteristic makes foot landing soft and gives a good contact between its sole and the ground. This feature can be implemented in a biped robot by using a small actuator for the ankle joints. A small actuator consumes less energy and makes the robot leg light. With less power in the ankle joints, walking becomes more difficult to control for the robot. This problem can be solved by providing the feedback control presented in this paper. The authors demonstrate two locomotion examples, standing and walking respectively, to show the validity of the proposed control scheme. In standing, the control input is the displacement of the ankle joint of the supporting leg. The control mechanism decides the bending angle of the body and the position of the swinging leg. For walking, only the bending angle of the body is used to avoid the discontinuity of the control input. Experimental results are presented to show the effectiveness of the new mechanism.

Coordinating two robot manipulators to handle flexible materials has a wide range of applications in the manufacturing industry. However, this problem has not been seriously addressed until recently. The two robot manipulators have to follow complicated trajectories to maintain a minimum interaction force with the flexible beam. These trajectories are very complicated and not suitable for real time systems. In this paper, three approximation methods of the optimal trajectories are introduced. The first one uses a piecewise linear approximation of the optimal trajectories, while the second one uses adaptive piecewise linear approximation. The third method utilizes the behavior of the optimal trajectories and applies a continuous approximation of the optimal trajectories using an ellipsoid. The interaction moment under these approximations is investigated. The authors found that the first method produces a peak in the interaction moment which can damage the object. The second method controls the peaks in the moment to a prescribed limit. In the third method, the moment is very small and the force is very close to the optimal force.

Coordinating two robot manipulators to handle flexible materials has a wide range of applications in the manufacturing industry. However, this problem has not been seriously addressed until recently. The two robot manipulators have to follow complicated trajectories to maintain a minimum interaction force with the flexible beam. These trajectories are very complicated and not suitable for real time systems. A compliant motion scheme is proposed to reduce the interaction forces and moments. The stability of the proposed system is investigated. Experimental results encourage the proposed scheme.