Internal model structure in the control of robot manipulators

Abstract

The conventional internal model control (IMC) structure commonly used in the process control field is applied for the control of robot manipulators. A pre-compensation structure, which comprises a linearizer and a stabilizer, is used to modify the dynamics of the robot manipulator so that the standard IMC structure can be implemented without violating its original straightforward and intuitive design principle. Analysis of this robot IMC structure reveals that this control algorithm can actually be considered as an enhancement of the conventional robot computed-torque control scheme. Both simulation and experimental results demonstrate that this proposed robot IMC scheme has significantly improved performance as compared with that for the conventional robot computed-torque control algorithm, especially in the presence of modelling uncertainty and external disturbances. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.