Nonlinear Bifurcation Analysis of a Robotic Arm Subject to Digital Position Control

Precision and stability in position control of robots are critical parameters in many industrial applications where high accuracy is needed. It is well known that digital effect is destabilizing and can cause instabilities. In this paper, we analyze a single DoF system and we present the stability limits in the parameter space of the control gains. Furthermore we introduce a nonlinearity relative to the saturation of the control force in the model, reduce the dynamics of the nonlinear map to its local center manifold, study the bifurcation along the stability border and identify conditions under which a supercritical or subcritical bifurcation occurs. The obtained results explain some of the typical instabilities occurring in industrial applications. We verify the obtained results through numerical simulations.