Hardware retrofit and computed torque control of a Puma 560 Robot updating an industrial manipulator

This article describes a third-year undergraduate project that involved the retrofit of a PUMA 560 manipulator robot, its interface with a PC, MATLAB-based software development for trajectory generation and graphical user interface, and a SIMULINK implementation of a PID computed torque control scheme. The project is an example of how a mechanically sound robotic platform with obsolete interfaces can be revitalized at low cost, enabling users to perform experimental research on the manipulator using a modern and flexible software interface based on MATLAB and SIMULINK.