On the predictive functional control of an elastic industrial robot

In this paper a new control concept for industrial robots (IR) will be presented which is based on predictive control principles. It can be easily implemented even for elastic mechanical IR structures. Both an excellent performance and robustness with respect to uncertainties or variations of the model parameters can be provided. The proposed algorithm has been practically applied for the point-to-point and path control of a conventional IR (KUKA 160) with elastic mechanical multibody structure. The performance quality will be demonstrated by experimental and simulation results.