Messages scheduling for a humanoid robot in the CAN

This paper deals with the messages scheduling of a CAN (Controller Area Network), based on the distributed control scheme to integrate actuators and sensors in a humanoid robot. In order to supply the distributed processing for a humanoid robot, each control unit should have the efficient control method, fast calculation and valid data exchange. The preliminary study has concluded that the performance of CAN is better and easier to implement than other network such as FIP (Factory Instrumentation Protocol), VAN (Vehicle Area Network), etc. Since a humanoid robot has to treat the significant control signals from many actuators and sensors, the communication time limitation could be critical according to the transmission speed and data length of CAN specification. In this paper, the CAN message scheduling in a humanoid robot was suggested under the presence of Jitter in the message group, the existence of high load of messages over the network and the presence of transmission errors. In addition, the response time under the worst case is compared with the limitation by using the simulation algorithm. As a result, the suggested messages scheduling can guarantee our CAN limitation, and utilize to generate the walking patterns for the humanoid.