Adaptive control of robot arm using driver programs

Most successful state-of-the-art robotic manipulators have the characteristic of producing precise, fast, smooth and reproducible movements. Their drawback is that they tend to have a limited repertoire which can only be extended by costly inverse kinematics calculations or direct teach-in sessions. The goal of our project is to develop a flexible open world robot, which adapts to its task and environment progressively and in an iterative manner. It begins carefully and slowly, with small jagged movements, but, after repetition, reaches an acceptable level of smoothness and execution speed. It can be placed in new surroundings with new task definitions, requiring only a further practice time before becoming expert. Similarities from other sub-tasks are recognized and may be transferred to the new domains. The basic constituents of the adaptive robot are simple iterative inverse kinematics and driver programs. In this paper the idea of driver programs for robot arm control is introduced and their properties investigated.