| This doctoral dissertation presents three different robot control platforms: The QRobot system, the QMotor Robotic Toolkit, and the Robotic Platform. All three platforms introduce novel software architectures that have the following common objectives: (i) reaching a new level of flexibility, (ii) establishing a new level of ease-of-use, and (iii) achieving a “one-box” solution, which means that the platform is integrated on a single PC, using a single operating system and a single programming language.; This research demonstrates that PC technology is very capable to implement this “one-box” robot control platform. Along with a real-time operating system, the PC allows for the implementation of a homogeneous object-oriented architecture, which fosters ease-of-use and flexibility of a robot control system. While the QRobot system and the QMotor Robotic Toolkit only focus on certain aspects of the above stated issues, the Robotic Platform finally meets all objectives by creating a very slim and optimized object-oriented design, which implements all components in the C++ programming language (including servo control and 3D simulation), utilizing a single PC running the QNX 6 operating system. |
