NUMERICAL-CALCULATION OF THE BASE INERTIAL PARAMETERS OF ROBOTS

This article presents a new approach to the problem of determining the minimum set of inertial parameters of robots. The calculation is based on numerical QR and SVD factorizations and on the scaling procedure of matrices. It proceeds in three steps: eliminate standard inertial parameters which have no effect on the dynamic model, determine the number of base parameters, and determine a set of base parameters by regrouping some standard parameters to some others in linear relations. Different models, linear in the inertial parameters are used: a complete dynamic model, a simplified dynamic model, and an energy model. The method is general, it can be applied to open loop, or graph-structured robots. The algorithms are easy to implement. An application for the PUMA 560 robot is given.