Adaptive control of a one link geared robot

In this paper, a simple one degree of freedom robot, designed for both research and teaching purposes, is described. An experimental set-up consists of a DC motor, a rate generator, a harmonic drive, a control system, and a load. The system has an open architecture and allows the programmer to distribute the intelligence between the single board computer (SBC) and PC compatible computer, which are connected through an interface. The SBC collects data from different sensors. System software resides on the SBC and PC compatible computer. Different friction characteristics of the harmonic-drive transmission are presented. A PID controller has been designed and successfully implemented. Different adaptive control algorithms were developed and tested both on a SUN workstation and on an experimental set-up.