A Comparative Study of Computer-Aided Engineering Techniques for Robot Arm Applications

As systems become increasingly complex, their simulation techniques have to be more accurate and enhanced. Despite the wide use of robotic arms in industries, they still encompass a wide number of complexities. The control of a flexible robot arm driven by a Brushless DC Motor (BDCM) for tracking problems is a great challenge, not only for its complex algorithms but also for its verification process. Robotic systems are designed heterogeneously by combining continuous and event discrete models. Therefore, computer-aided engineering tools have to be enhanced in order to support the verification of the control algorithms. Ensuring definite and rapid simulations is a challenging task for robotic application systems. Although control strategies can be tested using the Matlab/Simulink environment to assess their performance, their verification at a low-level still remains a very difficult task. This paper studies different simulation techniques based on Model In the Loop (MIL), Hardware In the Loop (HIL), and Hardware Software In the Loop (HSIL) on a flexible robot arm driven by BDCM in order to overcome each method's limits, focusing on performance and cost and simulation time reduction. The HSIL achieves the highest accuracy and speed than MIL and HIL and provides reusability and portability of the control unit compared to the other techniques.