Identification and Compensation of Geometric and Elastic Errors in Large Manipulators: Application to a High Accuracy Medical Robot

Abstract

Abstract A method is presented to identify the source of end-effector positioning errors in large manipulators using experimentally measured data. Both errors due to manufacturing tolerances and other geometric errors and elastic structural deformations are identified. These error sources are used to predict, and compensate for, the end-point errors as a function of configuration and measured forces. The method is applied to a new large high accuracy medical robot. Experimental results show that the method is able to effectively correct for the errors in the system.