Control Architectures and Operational Strategies for Intelligent, High-Powered Manipulators

Construction robots are typically required to move large loads at reaches of several and metres to provide and apply significant forces.. In addition, they are required to interact in a safe manner with what is many cases a highly unstructured environment. The paper describes two approaches to this problem and suggests how these may be brought together to provide a generic ‘core’ around which the functional and operational requirements of a task specific manipulator can be structured.