A Man/ Machine Interface and Framework for the Control of Integrated Manufacturing Workcells

This paper described the design of a user interface for the control of an integrated manufacturing environment that consists of articulated and mobile manipulator arms and other supporting elements. The various elements need to be able to communicate with one another, both to avoid collisions and to co-operate in accomplishing given tasks. In addition, information about the planned actions of all the elements needs to be available to the user, along with information about their status while the system is operating. The man/machine interface is programmed within X-Windows using calls to XView to initiate shells and links to control modules and Matlab to compute and display control actions.