Mechanical Arm Control

Abstract

This paper discusses three main problems associated with the control of the motion of a mechanical arm. 1) Transformation between different coordinate systems used to describe the state of the arm. 2) Calculation of detailed trajectories for the arm to follow when moving from point A to B. 3) Calculation of the forces that must be applied to the joints of the arm to make it move along a specified path. Each of the above problems is amenable to exact solution, however, the resulting equations are, in general, to complex to be used in a real time application. Throughout this paper we investigate methods for getting approximate solutions to these equations.