Visual Closed-Loop Dynamic Model Identification of Parallel Robots Based on Optical CMM Sensor

Abstract

Parallel robots present outstanding advantages compared with their serial counterparts; they have both a higher force-to-weight ratio and better stiffness. However, the existence of closed-chain mechanism yields difficulties in designing control system for practical applications, due to its highly coupled dynamics. This paper focuses on the dynamic model identification of the 6-DOF parallel robots for advanced model-based visual servoing control design purposes. A visual closed-loop output-error identification method based on an optical coordinate-measuring-machine (CMM) sensor for parallel robots is proposed. The main advantage, compared with the conventional identification method, is that the joint torque measurement and the exact knowledge of the built-in robot controllers are not needed. The time-consuming forward kinematics calculation, which is employed in the conventional identification method of the parallel robot, can be avoided due to the adoption of optical CMM sensor for real time pose estimation. A case study on a 6-DOF RSS parallel robot is carried out in this paper. The dynamic model of the parallel robot is derived based on the virtual work principle, and the built dynamic model is verified through Matlab/SimMechanics. By using an outer loop visual servoing controller to stabilize both the parallel robot and the simulated model, a visual closed-loop output-error identification method is proposed and the model parameters are identified by using a nonlinear optimization technique. The effectiveness of the proposed identification algorithm is validated by experimental tests.