As mentioned in Section 2.3.1, a simple linear feedback control law can be used to control the robot manipulator for positioning and trajectory tracking. For this purpose, a PID controller simulator was developed to enable testing and analyzing the robot behavior using this control strategy.
Using this control scheme helps us avoid the complex (and almost impossible) task of determining the robot parameters for our three-link prototype robot. One of the most complicated parameters is the inertia tensor matrix for each link, especially when the links are nonuniform and have complicated shapes.
This simulator has a user friendly interface that enables the user to
change any of the feedback coefficients and the forward gains on-line.
It can also read a pre-defined position trajectory for the robot to
follow. It also serves as a monitoring system that provides several
graphs and reports. The system is implemented using a graphical user
interface development kit called GDI.
Figure 21 shows
the interface window of that simulator.