A TEACHING ROBOT FOR DEMONSTRATING ROBOT CONTROL STRATEGIES

It is standard now in undergraduate and graduate courses in robotics t o teach the basic concepts of position control design strategies. Due to the geared motors inherent in most educational and industrial manip ulators, sophisticated control design strategies such as the inverse d ynamics technique cannot be easily demonstrated in a laboratory settin g. A direct drive 5-bar-linkage manipulator with reduced motor torque requirements is proposed in this paper for such a purpose. The manipul ator dynamics are easily understood by undergraduates and an inverse d ynamics control strategy is suggested which can be easily designed by students at the undergraduate level.