A New Approach to Robot Control

State-of-the-art robots do not perform up to their physical speed or load capabilities. Currently, performance is limited by the form of control implemented, which gives rise to speed and load dependent errors and overshoots. In this paper, a new control algorithm is proposed which entails smooth real time reference paths and an adaptive feedforward path-tracking algorithm. The result is high accuracy independent of speed and load. With the trade-off between speed and accuracy eliminated, the full operational capabilities of the axis motors can be exploited. The utility of these principles is shown in a video tape demonstration of a new controller for a Unimation PUMA robot.