A secondary benefit of modulaity will be ease of repair. Even though this modularity will not be without cost, the payoff will occur throughout the life of the robot in reduced down-time and ease of enhancement. Components that are difficult to get or are at risk of being discontinued will also be avoided. Virtually all parts will have multi-vendor sources. Each subsystem has access to information from other subsystems.
Subsystems can give and take commands from each other if needed.
Programs and parameters within each subsystem controller can be modified by other controllers to allow for adaptation to different applications and environment. A central control computer and software will exist with various layers of controllers underneath, but centralized control of every function, while possible, will not be necessary. This arrangement will allow functions to be placed in the most logical and efficient place within the network hierarchy and is expected to result in greatly improved response time and performance. The Task architecture will be open to allow easy modification, enhancement and addition. Formal specifications of the controller network, software functions and mechanical systems will be published to encourage and ease this process.