A Mobile Robot with Onboard Parallel Processor and Large Workspace Arm
Rodney A. Brooks, Jon Connell, Anita M. Flynn · 1986
a. The MIT AI Lab’s second mobile robot, MOBOT-2, has a number of unique design features. In this paper we describe two of them in detail. First, MOBOT-2 has an extremely cheap 32 processor distributed control system. The proces-sor system, called BARNACLE, runs asynchronously with no central locus of control. Unlike almost all other parallel processors this one has no expensive communications rout-ing network. The communication topology is determined by a distributed patch panel. All computing is done onboard the robot. Second, MOBOT-2 has an onboard arm. It is lightweight, but has an extremely large working volume. The arm is controlled by the parallel processor. Figure 1. MIT mobile robots a. MOBOT-1 b. Partially constructed MOBOT-2.