hodgson@watnow.waterloo.edu (John A. B. Hodgson) (12/20/90)
Is there a commercially available generic/universal interface to an industrial robot? We are interested in using RCCL to control an Intellidex robot. The controller which comes with the robot cannot run RCCL and may be too slow to act as an interface to a computer running RCCL. A description of the robot is as follows. The Intellidex robot has its own controller, which is virtually a black box. Inside is a small microprocessor which accepts either resolved motion commands or individual joint commands. The joints are driven by stepper motors and are sensed by encoders. What I think we need is a card which interfaces with a computer and can provide a pulse train to a stepper motor and can read an encoder. Parameters such as pulse width and frequency would be adjustable in order to adapt to a particular robot. One card would be required for each joint of the robot. -- Yours very sincerely, John Hodgson.