Learning control of robot manipulators by interactive simulation

Control systems of robot manipulators offer many challenges in education where the students must learn robot dynamics and control structures, and understand relations between the control parameters and the systems performance. Interactive simulation is aimed at improving the understanding of and intuition for the abstract parts of the control of robot courses. This paper presents an application of interactive simulation to teach control systems of robots. The application considers a nonlinear robot arm and two control modules: position control and motion control. Students can directly manipulate graphical representation of the systems such as a choice among seven control structures, controller gains, and desired trajectories, and obtain instant feedback on the effects. These features make the interactive learning tool stimulating and of high pedagogical value.