Calibration of drive chain of robot joints

This paper presents practical issues to determine drive chain parameters of robot joints such as drive gain and bandwidth, friction parameters, which allow one to obtain accurate values of joint torque starting from the measurement of the current reference of the current controlled amplifier. This stage is essential to get good control performances and to get accurate identification of inertial parameters using the dynamic or the energy model and least squares techniques. Simple experimental methods are given which cover joints actuated with permanent magnet DC or AC synchronous (brushless) motors