Description:

Conducted by the Virginia Tech TREC Lab, ForceBot aims to design and construct a VR co-bot to simulate physical interaction with virtual objects at the user’s hands and feet. The purpose of the project is to allow for more realistic virtual reality experiences. In the design, the user is suspended from the ground via a harness and their limbs are attached to the co-bot. 

My task was to program a high-level communication driver to interact with the OmronR88D1SN EtherCAT motor controller on ForceBot. The software was developed to work with the IHMC open-source robotics software and is now used for a variety of different projects in the TREC Lab. 

The low-level control framework I designed for PANDORA was also used for ForceBot’s distributed microcontroller system. The use of this framework simplified the microcontroller programming and reduced the development time significantly.