Identification of Robot Arm’s Joints’ Time-Varying Stiffness Under Loads

This paper is concerned with the identification problem of two degree of freedom robot arm’s joints’ time-varying stiffness under time-varying torque loads. The industrial robot arms can be simplified into series hinged linkage mechanism. The unrestraint dynamic equation of two degrees of freedom robot arm can be obtained by using analytical mechanics method. The model which was established in Pro/E had been imported into ADAMS for simulation. And the simulation consisted of free vibration and forced vibration. Then by choosing limited memory least square method and using the post-processing measured variables, time-varying stiffness could have been identified. Finally, the calculative stiffness was compared to the “real” stiffness which was simulated in ADAMS. The whole process shows that the robot arm’s dynamic model and the method of identification are both effective.