The Virtual Path: The Domain Model for the Design of the MIRO Surgical Robotic System

The MIRO Platform, designed at DLR, is a highly integrated and compliant mechatronic robotic system for minimally invasive surgery. This publication presents the “Virtual Path,” a domain model in the sense of Domain Driven Design, which provides a formal guideline for all designers of the MIRO Platform to obtain a deterministic implementation without the necessity of a monolithic framework. Using Hardware-Software Co-Design methods, the roles of the basic component types of a robotic system were formally defined. The result is a set of design idioms that provide a solution for three main issues when mapping those components to a distributed heterogeneous mechatronic architecture: synchronization, scheduling, and error handling

SpaceWire-HS Host Adapter - An FPGA based PCI Express Device for Versatile High-Speed Channels

Robotic systems like the DLR Hand Arm System that feature control cycles beyond 1 kHz demand a deterministic and low latency communication. Therefore, DLR is working on high-speed SpaceWire. This paper presents the SpaceWire-HS host adapter, a FPGA driven PCI Express device for high-speed SpaceWire. The adapter provides a generic host interface for QNX real-time hosts, supported by a client C++ library. Two implementation variants of the adapter’s communication architecture and host interface are presented. The performance of both variants in terms of bandwidth and latency is discussed

SpaceWire, A Backbone For Humanoid Robotic Systems

The DLR Hand Arm System is an anthropomorphic system with 52 actuators and 430 sensors of different types. In order to maintain good performance the application must have the most direct access to all actuators and sensors. Therefore, a SpaceWire network connects FPGAs and CPUs and acts as real-time communication backbone. This publication focuses on the SpaceWire protocol implementation and the dedicated extensions that are defined for that system

SpaceWire, A Backbone For Humanoid Robotic Systems

The DLR Hand Arm System is an anthropomorphic system with 52 actuators and 430 sensors of different types. In order to maintain good performance the application must have the most direct access to all actuators and sensors. Therefore, a SpaceWire network connects FPGAs and CPUs and acts as real-time communication backbone. This publication focuses on the SpaceWire protocol implementation and the dedicated extensions that are defined for that system

Flexible Signal-Oriented Hardware Abstraction for Rapid Prototyping of Robotic Systems.

Diffuse and changing specifcations for the design of light-weight robots result in high design costs for the desired robotic system, especially the electronic modules and related software drivers. To reduce those costs, we created a fexible robot platform, consisting of FPGA joint modules that are connected by a high speed communication. To fully exploit the hardware fexibility, we introduce a fexible signal-oriented hardware abstraction that is based on a Signal Flow Oriented Middleware (SFMiddleware). SFMiddleware enables the transparent integration of changing joint hardware functionality with robot control applications. Utilizing a static system specifcation approach, we benefit from the abstraction of a middleware without the typical overhead of common middleware implementations. Thus, we achieve a small run-time footprint and control cycles of more than 10 kHz

MICA - A new generation of versatile instruments in robotic surgery

Robotic surgery systems are highly complex and expensive pieces of equipment. Demands for lower cost of care can be met if these systems are employable in a flexible manner for a large variety of procedures. To protect the initial investment the capabilities of a robotic system need to be expandable as new tasks arise. To oblige the needs of future robotic support in hospitals, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has developed the versatile robotic system MiroSurge for medical applications. This paper presents a 3 DoF instrument for Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgery which is mounted to the hollow wrist of the DLR MIRO robot arm. The MICA instrument consists of a versatile drive train and a detachable task specific tool with its tool interface, shaft, 2 DoF wrist, 7 DoF force/torque sensor and the actuated functional end. With the current cabledriven tool, gripping and manipulation forces of above 10 N are feasible and dynamics is high enough for surgery at the beating heart

Towards High-Speed SpaceWire Links

Abstract—Various applications, such as telecommunication and robotics, ask for communication bandwidth beyond 1Gb/sec. However, SpaceWire is still limited to lower rates. The IEEE1355 standard proposes a high-speed exchange level, which is optimized for 8b12b-encoding (HS-SE-10 and HS-FO-10). To enable high-speed communication with SpaceWire, the authors resurrect the IEEE1355-HS-SE concept and adapt it to the requirements for SpaceWire links. Therefore, time-characters are integrated and the encoding is changed to 8b10b-encoding to enable the usage of common physical layer circuits. This paper presents the resulting specification, an exemplary implementation, and a first experimental result

The Computing and Communication Architecture of the DLR Hand Arm System

The computing and communication architecture of the DLR Hand Arm System is presented. Its task is to operate the robot’s 52 motors and 430 sensors. Despite that complexity, the main design goal for it is to create a flexible architecture that enables high-performance feedback control with cycles beyond 1kHz. Flexibility is achieved through a hierarchical net of computing nodes that goes from commercial-of-the-shelf hosts down to the physical interfaces of sensors and actuators. The concept of a Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) provides a convenient high-level interface to the entire robotic hardware. First experiments with prototypical control applications, featuring 100 kHz and 3 kHz control loops, demonstrate the performance of the architecture