www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKjYPU9uotg
I couldn't find a more technical description of Nitro, but that robot was rebuilt several times and initially used the NI SoftMotion SW with proto-jags to do position and velocity control via CAN. I wasn't involved in the early planning, but came in as part of a cleanup crew. From what I understand, the motion control was running on the cRIO at a few kHz as an interrupt routine driven by the FPGA clocking. It used true CAN module, high resolution encoders, and customized jags.
As the guy tasked with trying to get a robot to dance, it turns out that you really want more than position setpoints and an overall velocity. Whew.
If you are interested, I can ask one of the control leads on the project for a summary of it. I'm not sure quite how to map it to what is in the kit, but there is also the option of contributing to the jag SW and seeing if TI and the control team can bless the added functionality from a safety aspect.
Greg McKaksle