The thesis addresses the development of a simple 3 axis robot driver based on
the BeagleBone Blue platform. This work is exploiting the deterministic nature
of the two Texas Instruments Sitara AM335x microprocessor’s integrated PRU
(Programmable Real-Time) cores.
With ROS (Robot Operating System) package running on the Linux part,
(ARM Cortex-A8) it is possible to plan and execute a robot’s end effector tra-
jectory from one point in space to another. This is all achieved within ROS
Industrial extension capabilities. ROS is sending the joints reference position in-
formation to PRUs via the RPMsg driver. From there, one of the PRU cores acts
as a servo controller, driving the motors to the desired position. The motors’
positions are also fed back to the Linux ARM part of the robot controller for
visualization and further processing purposes.
The microprocessor’s PRU cores with their extraordinary real-time perfor-
mance, turn out to be a perfect solution for a real time problem, such as driving
the positions of several robot’s motors.
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