DIMSART: A Real Time - Device Independent Modular Software Architecture for Robotic and Telerobotic Applications

In this paper a software architecture for robotic and telerobotic applications will be described. The software is device and platform independent, and is distributed control orientated. Thus, the package is suitable for any real time system configuration. The architecture allows designers to easily build complex control schemes for any hardware device, easily control and manage them, and communicate with other devices with a plug- in/plug-out modular concept. The need to create a platform where control engineers/designers could freely implement their algorithms, without needing to worry about the device driver and programming related issues, further motivated this project. Implementing a new control algorithm with the software architecture described here, requires that the designer simply follow a template where the necessary code is reduced to only those functions having to do with the controller. We conducted several teleoperation schemes, one of which will be presented here as a configuration example.