Transputer control of a flexible robot link

The applicability of transputers in control systems is investigated. This is done by implementing a controller for a flexible robot arm with one degree of freedom on a system consisting of an IBM-AT and four transputers. It is found that a control system with transputers offers a great improvement compared with conventional digital control systems. Transputers can solve the common problem in control practice, i.e. having very sophisticted controllers but not being able to implement them because they need too much computing time. However, transputers are not an optimal solution for more sophisticated control systems because of shortcomings in the scheduling mechanism