Model-based manipulator control and the computational cost

This paper addresses the computational cost associated with the manipulator control. Manipulator dynamics are known to be computationally intense owing to its coupled nonlinear nature. In this work we analyze the computational cost associated with a traditional nonlinear model-based control scheme of a manipulator with that of the model-based distributed control scheme. We restrict our focus on planar serial link manipulators as the coupling effects are maximum in such configurations. The computational cost associated with the model-based control and its distributed counterpart are compared as the degrees-of-freedom of the manipulator increases from two to six.