Adaptive control of a robotic manipulator using digital signal processor chips

With the growing importance of the robotic manipulators in the area of industrial automation, there is an increase in demand for their position accuracy. To control such robotic systems effectively, more complex forms of control than the simple constant gain linear feedback control is required. Two adaptive control schemes, namely the adaptive PID controller and the self-tuning controller, are implemented in the system. To provide for fast control actions in the robotic system, a real-time approach is adopted. Such operation requires large computing power in a relatively short period of time. A digital signal processor (DSP) whose architecture is optimized to process sampled data at high rate is well suited to this purpose. Its architecture is designed to exploit the repetitive nature of signal processing by pipelining the data flow for extra speed. The TMS320C25 DSP chip is chosen for this purpose. From extensive experimental testing, it is shown that the position accuracy of the robotic manipulator using the given adaptive control schemes is within the 0.5 mm range