Robot Manipulators: Modeling, Simulation and Optimal Multi-Variable Control

In this paper, virtual prototype modeling, simulation and optimization of a 3 DOF SCARA robot as an example of robot manipulators, based on using software packages are presented. The softwares, Solidworks, Matlab and specially its module, Simmechanics, are used for robot modeling and thenMulti-Variable control process is performed with PID controller for controlling the robot. After modeling error RMS is defined as optimization objective function and the controller is optimized by Genetic algorithm. In this way, online kinematics solution in Simmechanics is introduced to avoid mathematical modeling of inverse kinematics problem. The strong point of this work is to facilitate modeling of complex mechatronical systems for engineers and virtual motion visualization of the mechanisms helps the engineers to have better understanding of systems behavior. Using exact numeric prototype of the robot in optimization problem, make it possible to use optimized controller for the actual robot.