Virtual performance evaluation of an industrial SCARA robot prior to real-world task

Industrial robots are widely used in manufacturing and automation environments. Many applications require a physical contact between the robot end-effector and the surrounding environment. Therefore, position and force control are needed. Controlling a robot can be successfully achieved by obtaining an accurate dynamic model of the robot. In this paper, the dynamic model of a four degree of freedom (DOF) SCARA robot is derived using MapleSim^® software. Furthermore, MapleSim will not only be used to find the dynamic model of the robot, but also to control the interaction force between the robot and its working environment. To verify the derived model, an impedance controller with specified mass, damping, and stiffness is implemented to control the interaction force. In addition, MapleSim is successfully used to validate the control algorithm. The results show that the system is not stable if the virtual mass gain is much larger than the summation of the masses of links three and four. The use of MapleSim in robotic application is relatively new and is an ongoing research. This paper concludes that the robot’s performance can be evaluated virtually using MapleSim before assigning the robot in real-world tasks.