This paper is dealing with the problem of tracking control for uncertain flexible joint manipulator robots driven by brushless direct current motor (BDCM). Flexibility of joint in the manipulator constitutes one of the most important sources of uncertainties. In order to achieve high performance, all parts of the manipulator including actuator have been modeled. To cancel the tracking error, a hysteresis current controller and speed controllers have been developed. To evaluate the effectiveness of speed controllers, a comparative study between proportional integral (PI) and sliding mode controllers has been performed. Finally, simulation results carried out in the Matlab simulink environment demonstrate the high precision of sliding mode controller compared with PI controller in the presence of uncertainties of joint flexibility.

In the last decades, the classical verification of robotic software component is postponed until the code is developed enough to function in real hardware. For this reason, the verification of code at early stages is essential to reduce development costs and necessary time for embedded systems such as robot manipulator. Therefore, Software In the Loop (SIL) simulation may be realized in the early stages of software development. It offers the possibility to execute tests before the hardware is available and thus detect errors. In this paper, we propose a Software In the Loop (SIL) test for robot manipulator driven by a Brushless DC Motor without a target system hardware. Simulation results prove the rapidity and the good performance of the developed code for the controller’s part by the validation of the behavior of robot manipulator software.

Robot manipulators are widely used in industries. The raised complexity of robot manipulators dynamics considering actuator part makes control strategies hard to be designed and verified. In fact, the design and the verification of the control strategies have achieved a special attention via Matlab Simulink environment tool. However, the high time simulation is an essential drawback of this tool due to the robotic system complexity. This paper proposes a Hardware Software In the Loop (HSIL) technique via FPGA board for the two degrees robot control driven by Brushless DC Motor (BDCM). This latter has shown its rapidity, high performances and low cost which represent a big challenge for power electronics systems especially in the robotic field.

The robot manipulators have crossed several areas of research especially in the industries. In fact, the development of robot systems generally require several iterations, which may be based on a simulation approach, by providing a physical prototype or a combination of them. On one hand, development using simulation should take into account not only the modeling of the robot, but also that of its actuators. Unfortunately, the model of the whole system may be inaccurate due its complexity. On the other hand, the realization of a prototype to the system overcomes the problems of insufficient knowledge and imprecision of the model but the prototyping time is very high. The hybrid solution that is the simulation with hardware in the loop can be replaced in the simulation part through Simulink Matlab environment. Only the sub-system whose model is not well known or imprecise is replaced by its prototype via FPGA board. This hybrid solution is characterized by the use of real parts in hardware inside the loop simulation to reduce both costs and development time and to not sacrifice from the inaccuracy which represent big challenges for robot systems. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of design controllers for electrically driven robot manipulator.

Flexible joint manipulators are widely used in industries. The harmonic drive is often token as rigid component in the mechanical arm control. Nevertheless, several studies have shown that the joint flexibility characteristic in manipulator seriously reduces the performance of whole system especially when including actuator dynamic. This paper proposes a back-stepping method to control flexible joint manipulator including the dynamic of actuator to obtain the desired trajectory with minimum vibration. The controller is achieved by the analysis of Lyapunov stability to guarantee the stability of the system. Backstepping controller has been treated for position control and an hysteresis controller has been developed for current control. Simulation results through simulink environment are necessary to show the effectiveness of the adopted controllers.