Modeling of dynamics of industrial robots with flexible electric drives

Robot manipulators have greatly enhanced the performance of automated processes during the last decades. Industrial competition, however, creates an increasing demand to further improve the accuracy of off-line programming. Validated dynamic robot models are required for this purpose. We describe the development of a generic dynamic model which includes centrifugal, gravitational and Coriolis forces, motor dynamics, joint elasticities, etc., and specialize it to an actual industrial robot-KUKA IR 761. Time-optimal control is used in our computations for the rigid model of the manipulator performing a real life transport maneuver. The compliant vibrations of the overall robot model exhibited by time-optimal piecewise control are analyzed.