The Computer and Information Science Department at the University of Massachusetts will purchase: (1) The Utah/MIT Dextrous Hand, (2) the CONDOR Control Architecture, (3) A Transputer Control Architecture, (4) Brock Tactile Sensors, (5) Camera/Frame Grabber, (6) An interface from the Sequent Multiprocessor to the robotics lab. This equipment will be used to support research in computer and information science and engineering. The equipment will be used for several research projects, including: (1) The development of controllers for complex robots: high bandwidth, reflexive controllers and low bandwidth, task level (behavior based) controllers for multifingered manipulators. (2) The automatic synthesis of assembly operations using geometrical reasoning. (3) The interpretation of tactile and visual data; for recognition, localization, and sensory feedback. (4) The specification of architecture for autonomous planning and control. The selection of effective coupling between planning, management, and execution based on task level problem specification. The implementation of such systems on Distributed parallel architectures employing the Robot Schema System (RSS). (5) The exploration of learning and skill refinement in the robot domain.
