Design of an Almost Critically-Damped Single Robot Arm

Abstract

Abstract Modern, fast, and light robot arms are more susceptible to vibration problems than the old, slow, and massive robot arms. Passive vibration control using damping and dynamic absorbers may be used to decrease the settling time of the robot arm after it has been driven to its desired position. Implementation of an optimally damped vibration absorber has been recently investigated and results showed success in shortening the settling time of a single robot arm. This paper realizes that a critically damped structure is the fastest structure to settle in its static equilibrium position. This paper, thus, uses recent results on damping ratios of multi-degree-of-freedom systems to provide a design scheme that uses both a damped vibration absorber and distributed damping (such as a damping layer) with the robot arm to realize an almost critically damped design. Simulation results show that the new design method results a single arm link design that is faster to settle than the previously published designs.