POINT-TO-POINT (PTP) CONTROL PERFORMANCES OF AN UPPER LIMB ROBOTIC ARM

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to design a controller which is able to control the output angle for an upper limb of a robotic arm, for precision motion and high speed response.  The aim is to optimize the best controller for an upper limb robotic arm system for precision motion, in which improper motion will results in injuries/ fatality and loss of production in manufacturing system. In this research, a robotic arm prototype with a 1 degree-of-freedom (DOF) was designed and fabricated, in which the DC geared motor was implemented.  Studies are carried out based on previous research to investigate the suitable type of controller. PID controller and fuzzy logic controller are chosen and compared in terms of their performances such as the steady-state error, settling time, rise time and overshoot. The equipment’s used are Micro-Box 2000/2000C, Cytron DC geared motor, motor driver circuit. Micro-Box module acts as the interface between hardware component and MATLAB R2009a. Open-loop simulations are carried out to obtain the transfer function of the motor and substituted into the system for further simulation analysis. Simulation for the uncompensated system is carried out to observe the close-loop system characteristic without the controller. After that, the close-loop point-to-point (PTP) trajectory control for simulations & experiments are carried out for the compensated systems using PID controller based on the Ziegler-Nichols frequency response method. Analyses are made based on the results obtained and the best type of controller is chosen for achieving precise motion control for the upper limb robotic arm. In this paper, the PID controller shows better performances compared to the Fuzzy Logic controller (FLC) with the steady state error of less than 0.010 and settling time of 0.5s; for the input reference of 150  respectively.