The Application of a Software Servo Control System to Robot Manipulators

Abstract

The attainment of fine dynamic performance in robot manipulator systems is difficult using conventional control methods because of both the inherent geometric nonlinearities of these systems and the dependence of the system dynamics on the characteristics of manipulated objects. This paper proposes a software servo control system with a simple adaptive control law for maintaining uniformly good performance over a wide range of motion and payloads. The control system makes it possible to adapt quickly to the variation of manipulator dynamics by changing both position and velocity gains. The effectiveness of the control system is demonstrated in several simulations. The experimental results show further close agreement with the theoretical results, illustrating some of the advantages of the control system.