A contour following strategy for 2-link manipulator using coordinate transformation approach

Concerning control of robot manipulator, a general idea is to handle the motion of end-effector. With respect to conventional contour design, a prescribed profile in work space is usually decomposed into independent joint position such that the success in contouring task relies on good tracking performance of each joint. Nevertheless, sometimes it is difficult to achieve precise track because of the dynamics which exists in each joint is different from each other. As a result, in this paper, architecture of contour control associating with a contouring index (CI) is proposed via using matrix transformation scheme. Calculated by the geometrical sense, the CI is taken as an equivalent contour error such that the reduction in CI is equivalent to reduction in real contour error. Moreover, with the aid of the CI, the end-effector is capable to attach to the desired profile even though tracking errors in work space exist significantly. Finally, in consideration of circular and non-circular profiles, the contour following properties are demonstrated by utilizing a two degree of freedom rigid robot via numerical simulations.