Continuum robots, with the capability of bending and extending at any point along their length mimic the abilities of an octopus arm or an elephant trunk. These manipulators present a number of exciting possibilities. While calculating a static solution for the system has been proven with certain models to produce satisfactory results [1], this approach ignores the significant effects a dynamics solution captures. However, adding time and studying the physical effects produced on a continuum robot involves calculation of the robot’s shape at a number of discrete points. Typically, the separation between points will be very small and thus a solution requires large amounts of computational power. We present a method to improve calculation speed for dynamic problems with the use of CUDA, a framework for parallel GPU computing. GPUs are ideally suited for massively parallel computations because of their multi-processor architecture. Our dynamics solution will take advantage of this parallel environment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MSSTATE/oai:scholarsjunction.msstate.edu:td-4014 |
| Date | 30 April 2011 |
| Creators | Orellana, Roberto A |
| Publisher | Scholars Junction |
| Source Sets | Mississippi State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Theses and Dissertations |
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