Page 58 - Concise Encyclopedia of Robotics

Centralized Control
Telescoping arm

Sliding movement

Cartesian coordinate geometry

CENTRALIZED CONTROL
In a system containing more than one robot, centralized control refers to
oversight of all the individual robots by a single controller.Communication
between the controller and the robots is usually done by wireless means
such as radio, although other means, such as flexible wire or fiber-optic
cables, can be used. This type of robotic system is somewhat analogous to
a client-server computer network.
In a centrally controlled robotic system, the main computer plays the
role of a quasi-human operator. In some systems, the individual robots
are partially autonomous, containing controllers of their own; this allows
the system to keep operating at full capacity for a time, even in the event
of a break in one or more of the communication links. This is known as
partially centralized control. Another example of partially centralized
control is a system in which each robot receives a set of instructions from

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