The testbed monitors the following IRp-6 state variables during the arm movement:
The position signal of each joint is generated by the resolver mounted on the motor. The velocity signal is linearly proportional to the voltage produced by the tachometer. Motor current is measured as a voltage across a low resistance added to the power amplifier output circuit.
The facility consists of a measuring station, a PC computer and the IRp-6 robot which is permanently linked to the testbed. The measuring station is a separate rack with multiple sites for circuit boards, the MULTIBUS 2 electronic bus, a power supply and several analog input cards, digital input/output cards, counter cards. Special, custom made, two interface cards let the station be controlled by a PC. One of the interface cards is plugged into a PC and the second one is plugged into the station.
The measurement software is written in assembly language and C language and runs under the supervision of DOS. The software starts the robot motion, which had been programmed earlier, and it simultaneously starts the measurements, which are subsequently stored in the computer memory. After stopping the robot movement, the results are processed and visualized on the PC monitor. The results may also be saved on hard disk. The user can see the state variables characteristics as functions of time ( time diagrams).
The testbed was used by the research team to identify the dynamic parameters of the robot mathematical model. It is a demonstrative utility for students who can program the robot path including its velocity and then they can check the robot control behaviour.