Integrated high-speed torque control system for a robotic joint

A printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) for controlling the torque output of a motor-driven joint in a robot, the robot having a control circuit adapted for providing both Cartesian control and impedance-based control of the robot without also controlling the torque output, the PCBA comprising:

• a joint processor;
• and
• a high-speed bus providing a calibrated data transfer rate between the PCBA and a brainstem;
• wherein the motor-driven joint is driven by at least one joint motor, and wherein the PCBA is configured to provide feedback-based torque control of the at least one joint motor in a control loop of at least approximately 10 KHz, and to receive data output from the brainstem at a rate of less than approximately 400 Hz, wherein the data output describes the Cartesian control and the impedance-based control.

A robot comprising:

• a plurality of joint motors;
• a plurality of motor-driven joints each being driven by at least one of the joint motors;
• and
• a control system having:
• a top-level controller that generates task-based control input signals to command execution of a required task involving some of the joint motors;
• a brainstem configured to process the task-based control signals to thereby determine which of the joints to activate to execute the required task, and to coordinate the motion of the activated joints;
• and
• a joint-level controller in communication with the brainstem and having plurality of printed circuit board assemblies (PCBAs) each including a processor and a high-speed bus, the bus providing a calibrated data transfer rate between the PCBA and brainstem of less than approximately 1 KHz;
• wherein each PCBA is configured to control a torque output of at least one of the joint motors and all degrees of freedom only of a corresponding one of the joints using a feedback control loop of at least approximately 10 KHz, and wherein the brainstem provides both Cartesian control and impedance-based control of the robot at the calibrated data transfer rate without also controlling the torque output.