A simulation program has been implemented to study the performance of each manipulator and the effect of varying the update frequency on the system. Also it helps to find approximate ranges for the required torque and/or voltage, and to determine the maximum velocity to know the necessary type of sensors and A/D. To make the benchmarks, as described in the next section, we did not use a graphical interface to the simulator, since the drawing routines are time consuming, and thus give misleading figures for the speed.
In this simulator, some reasonable parameters have been chosen for our manipulator. The user can select the length of the simulation, and the update frequency. The third model was used for testing and benchmarking because its dynamics are the most difficult and time consuming compared to the other two models. Table 1 shows the number of calculations in the dynamics module for each model.
Table 1: Number of calculations involved in the dynamics module.