INTERNAL MODEL STRUCTURE IN THE CONTROL OF ROBOT MANIPULATORS

The conventional internal model control (IMC) structure commonly used in the process control field is applied for the control of robot manip ulators. A pre-compensation structure, which comprises a linearizer an d a stabilizer, is used to modify the dynamics of the robot manipulato r so that the standard IMC structure can be implemented without violat ing its original straightforward and intuitive design principle. Analy sis of this robot IMC structure reveals that this control algorithm ca n actually be considered as an enhancement of the conventional robot c omputed-torque control scheme. Both simulation and experimental result s demonstrate that this proposed robot IMC scheme has significantly im proved performance as compared with that for the conventional robot co mputed-torque control algorithm, especially in the presence of modelli ng uncertainty and external disturbances. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.