Object-Oriented Programming in Robotics Research for Excavation

A laboratory study of force-cognitive robot excavation is described, with particular emphasis on the use of object-oriented programming (OOP) for rapid prototyping of the computational processes. Unmodeled forces develop between the bucket and the soil medium during digging, and the human operator typically adjusts digging trajectories in response to those force conditions. Existing approaches to robot control are inadequate for this problem; in this prototype effort, a supervisory level of force control is developed, and is demonstrated to achieve the needed capabilities. Prototype development entails extensive programming demands, and OOP contributes new efficiencies to meet those demands. An existing OOP environment is first extended for communications to a real-time processing system on which signal-level position control is executed. The supervisory level of force control is accomplished in OOP computation, as are the conventional computational needs for manipulator modeling and trajectory calculation. Inheritance, modularity, and polymorphism of OOP contribute significantly to the development of the required software.