Friction modeling with temperature effects for industrial robot manipulators

In this paper we present a new friction model for industrial robot manipulators that takes into account temperature effects. In particular, after having shown that friction might change very significantly during robot operations, two solutions based on a polynomial description of the joint friction are proposed and compared. In both cases the models proposed do not need a measurement of the joint temperature, but just of the environmental temperature, so as to be easily applied in industry. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the applied methodology.