Proceedings Article | 18 July 2014
KEYWORDS: Telescopes, Control systems, Sensors, Mirrors, Visualization, Brain, Motion controllers, Basal ganglia, Spinal cord, Motion analysis
The “Gran Telescopio de Canarias” (GTC1) is an optical-infrared 10-meter segmented mirror telescope at the ORM
observatory in Canary Islands (Spain). The GTC control system (GCS), the brain of the telescope, is is a distributed
object & component oriented system based on RT-CORBA and it is responsible for the management and operation of the
telescope, including its instrumentation. On the other hand, the Human motor cortex (HMC) is a region of the cerebrum
responsible for the coordination of planning, control, and executing voluntary movements. If we analyze both systems, as
far as the movement control of their mechanisms and body parts is concerned, we can find extraordinary similarities in
their architectures. Both are structured in layers, and their functionalities are comparable from the movement conception
until the movement action itself: In the GCS we can enumerate the Sequencer high level components, the Coordination
libraries, the Control Kit library and the Device Driver library as the subsystems involved in the telescope movement
control. If we look at the motor cortex, we can also enumerate the primary motor cortex, the secondary motor cortices,
which include the posterior parietal cortex, the premotor cortex, and the supplementary motor area (SMA), the motor
units, the sensory organs and the basal ganglia. From all these components/areas we will analyze in depth the several
subcortical regions, of the the motor cortex, that are involved in organizing motor programs for complex movements and
the GCS coordination framework, which is composed by a set of classes that allow to the high level components to
transparently control a group of mechanisms simultaneously.
