Re: Project consortium decisions

Dear Herman,

I have followed with interest from the beginning the development of the
OROCOS
proposal,  but I have never
replied, since my group has started only in these last few months to
deal with
RT-Linux applications to robotics.

A brief presentation:

At Politecnico di Torino our robotic research group (4 full time
researchers and
professors, plus 2 PhD students + many other master thesis students) has
made
its experiences on a teaching two-links planar arm from IMI (USA) with
two
brushless direct drive motors and a PC-DSP based real time control.
Recently we
have acquired a COMAU Smart S2 Robot with an "open" C3G control.

We had some experience with real time control, having collaborated in
developing
a home-made Hw/Sw architecture called OpenDSP, that presently has
completely
replaced the original Hw/Sw architecture for the IMI arm.

Recently we have bought from ERXA a copy of Generis (I have followed
with
interest your e-mail exchange with Emilio Ruiz of JRC), but our
experience is
very preliminary.

Also in the last months we have 'launched' a PhD student on RT-Linux to
gain
practical knowledge on RT kernels.

Our research interest (and consequently possible field of collaboration)
are:
- force control of robotic arms
- impact control of robotic arms
- control of flexible arms with piezoelectric sensors/actuators
- calibration and other parameter identification issues
- robust control (in general and specifically for robotics)
- robust path planning, i.e. Kalman_filter_like, for mobile robots (only
at
theoretical level)
- path planning for industrial robots
- vision_in_the_loop (very preliminary work)

So, in conclusions, I would be very interested in participating as
'Contributor'
to your proposed project, following your last message:

> The Consortium is nothing else but the sum of the `Partners', the
> `Members' and the `Contributors'. The `Partners' receive funding from
> the project, at the amount of 1 man year in total; the `Members'
> receive travel grants, for a total of 4 meetings; the `Contributors'
> don't receive any financial support, but have access to all results of
> the project. (Since OROCOS is an open source project, the
> `Contributors' are all those interested parties that contribute to the
> software and documentation base of OROCOS; the distinction between
> `Contributors' and the other members of the OROCOS project exists only
> within the framework of the IST Project, and not in the day-to-day
> working of the project. Hence, this naming will not show up on the
> OROCOS website <www.orocos.org>, except for the `IST proposal' page.)
>
> The `Partners' receive funding, and hence have more responsibilities
> than the `Members': `Partners' make sure _all_ Work Packages get
> appropriate attention (that is, the parts for which insufficient input
> is received from the whole consortium must be filled in by the
> partners). The three partners are responsible _together_ to reach the
> deliverables; it's the responsibility of the Coordinator to assign and
> motivate responsible people from the `Partners' for each of the
> project's Deliverables.
> [...]

Please fell free to ask additional information.

Thank you again for your coordinating efforts, and best regards

Basilio Bona

--
Basilio Bona
Professor of Industrial Robotics
DAUIN - Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi, 24
10129 Torino, Italy

tel +39 011-564.7023
fax +39 011-564.7099
http://ladiserver1.polito.it/robotica/Curriculum/bben.htm