Flexible Control of Complex Kinematic Chains

Robots providing meaningful services in unconstraint environments require advanced mobility, manipulation, sensing and perception capabilities. KUKA’s task in DESIRE was to develop robot arms and control hardware and software that are flexible with respect to the number of degrees of freedom and their connections to build kinematic chains and the type of sensors used to perceive the environment. To enable the DESIRE project partners and research partners beyond the DESIRE consortium to work with advanced lightweight torquecontrolled robot arms KUKA and DLR engaged in a technology transfer leading to the commercialization of the DLR Lightweight Robot. After many innovative steps, first at DLR beginning in the early 1990s, later at DLR and KUKA, both partners managed to successfully go the strenuous road from the original invention, an idea made manifest in 1991, to prototypes produced in a small series starting in December 2008 [5]. This paper first reviews the most important steps leading to this development. Second, the development of flexible controllers which enabled the project partners to integrate the KUKA-DLR Lightweight Robot in a dual-arm robot system is presented. Furthermore, independent KUKA demonstrators – an omnidirectional mobile manipulator and a dual arm system – are introduced which demonstrate the capabilities of a newly developed controller framework.