An FPGA-based controller for collaborative robotics

The use of robots is becoming more common in society. Industrial robots are being developed to work with people, and lower-force collaborative robots are being developed to help people in their everyday lives. These may need fast and sophisticated motion control and behavioral algorithms, but are expected to be more compact and lower cost. This paper proposes a processor plus FPGA solution for the control systems for such robots, where the FPGA performs all real-time tasks, freeing the processor to run lower-frequency high level control and interface to other devices such as camera systems. A demonstrator robot is designed, combining multi-axis motion control with 3D robot vision

Synopsis of an engineering solution for a painful problem Phantom Limb Pain

This paper is synopsis of a recently proposed solution for treating patients who suffer from Phantom Limb Pain (PLP). The underpinning approach of this research and development project is based on an extension of “mirror box” therapy which has had some promising results in pain reduction. An outline of an immersive individually tailored environment giving the patient a virtually realised limb presence, as a means to pain reduction is provided. The virtual 3D holographic environment is meant to produce immersive, engaging and creative environments and tasks to encourage and maintain patients’ interest, an important aspect in two of the more challenging populations under consideration (over-60s and war veterans). The system is hoped to reduce PLP by more than 3 points on an 11 point Visual Analog Scale (VAS), when a score less than 3 could be attributed to distraction alone

A Survey on IEEE 1588 Implementation for RISC-V Low-Power Embedded Devices

IEEE 1588, also known as the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), is a standard protocol for clock synchronization in distributed systems. While it is not architecture-specific, implementing IEEE 1588 on Reduced Instruction Set Computer-V (RISC-V) low-power embedded devices demands considering the system requirements and available resources. This paper explores various approaches and techniques to achieve accurate time synchronization in such instruments. The analysis covers software and hardware implementations, discussing each method’s challenges, benefits, and trade-offs. By examining the state-of-the-art in this field, this paper provides valuable insights and guidance for researchers and engineers working on time-critical applications in RISC-V-based embedded systems, aiding in selecting the most-suitable stack for their designs.This work was partially supported by the ECSEL Joint Undertaking in the H2020 project IMOCO4.E, grant agreement No.10100731, and by the Basque Government within the fund for research groups of the Basque University System IT1440-22 and KK-2023/00015

Design of a universal robot controller

The paper deals with a general purpose industrial robot controller. Due to the modules of the system is universal. It can be connected to several types of robots, even to CNC, turning-mill or other machines. It was connected to an Adept Scara robot successfully,experimental results will be presented. The basic element of the system is the EMC2 open source robot controller program, which runs in a realtime linux kernel. A PCI card creates the high speed connection between the EMC2 and the machine. DC servo amplifier, digital input and output module, teach pendant, and power electronics designed for the system. The system is RT-middleware (Robotics Technology Middleware)compatible. The RT-middleware is a common robot control platform, which can easily connect different robots to the same network for a common work

VAMP - a vision based sensor network for health care hygiene

Adequate hand-washing has been shown to be a critical activity in preventing the transmission of infections such as MRSA in health-care environments. Hand-washing guidelines published by various health-care related institutions recommend a technique incorporating six hand-washing poses that ensure all areas of the hands are thoroughly cleaned. In this paper, an embedded wireless vision system (VAMP) capable of accurately monitoring hand-washing quality is presented. The VAMP system hardware consists of a low resolution CMOS image sensor and FPGA processor which are integrated with a microcontroller and ZigBee standard wireless transceiver to create a wireless sensor network (WSN) based vision system that can be retargeted at a variety of health care applications. The device captures and processes images locally in real-time, determines if hand-washing procedures have been correctly undertaken and then passes the resulting high-level data over a low-bandwidth wireless link. The paper outlines the hardware and software mechanisms of the VAMP system and illustrates that it offers an easy to integrate sensor solution to adequately monitor and improve hand hygiene quality. Future work to develop a miniaturized, low cost system capable of being integrated into everyday products is also discussed

Embedding runtime verification post-deployment for real-time health management of safety-critical systems

As cyber-physical systems increase in both complexity and criticality, formal methods have gained traction for design-time verification of safety properties. A lightweight formal method, runtime verification (RV), embeds checks necessary for safety-critical system health management; however, these techniques have been slow to appear in practice despite repeated calls by both industry and academia to leverage them. Additionally, the state-of-the-art in RV lacks a best practice approach when a deployed system requires increased flexibility due to a change in mission, or in response to an emergent condition not accounted for at design time. Human-robot interaction necessitates stringent safety guarantees to protect humans sharing the workspace, particularly in hazardous environments. For example, Robonaut2 (R2) developed an emergent fault while deployed to the International Space Station. Possibly-inaccurate actuator readings trigger the R2 safety system, preventing further motion of a joint until a ground-control operator determines the root-cause and initiates proper corrective action. Operator time is scarce and expensive; when waiting, R2 is an obstacle instead of an asset. We adapt the Realizable, Responsive, Unobtrusive Unit (R2U2) RV framework for resource-constrained environments. We retrofit the R2 motor controller, embedding R2U2 within the remaining resources of the Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) controlling the joint actuator. We add online, stream-based, real-time system health monitoring in a provably unobtrusive way that does not interfere with the control of the joint. We design and embed formal temporal logic specifications that disambiguate the emergent faults and enable automated corrective actions. We overview the challenges and techniques for formally specifying behaviors of an existing command and data bus. We present our specification debugging, validation, and refinement steps. We demonstrate success in the Robonaut2 case study, then detail effective techniques and lessons learned from adding RV with real-time fault disambiguation under the constraints of a deployed system

FLAG: A Framework for FPGA-based LoAd Generation in Profinet Communication

Like other automated system technologies, PROFINET, a real-time Industrial Ethernet Standard has shown increasing level of integration into the present IT Infrastructure. Such vast use of PROFINET can expose the controllers and I/O devices to operate in critical failures when traffic goes unexpectedly higher than normal. Rigorous testing of the running devices then becomes essential and therefore, in this paper, we prototype and design an FPGA based load Generating solution called FLAG (FPGA-based LoAd Generator) for PROFINET based traffic at the desired load configurations such as, bits per second, the number and size of the packets with their Ethertypes and MAC addresses. We have employed, a Zynq-7000 FPGA as our implementation platform for the proposed FLAG framework. The system can easily be deployed and accessed via the web or command line interface for successful load generation. Extensive experiments have been conducted to verify the effectiveness of our proposed solution and the results confirm that the proposed framework is capable to generate precise load at Fast/Gigabit line rate with a defined number of packets