Abstract
A new torque cancelling system (TCS) that stabilizes mechanical sway in quick-motion robots is discussed in this paper. It cancels the reaction moment generated by the motion of an object by considering the precise dynamics of the object and the body of the robot itself. The reaction moment can be obtained accurately using the parallel solution scheme of inverse dynamics, which handles the dynamics of complex robotic architectures by modeling them with finite elements. Once the reaction moment is known, it can be cancelled by applying an anti-torque to a torque generating device. In this paper, the general concepts of the TCS and the parallel solution scheme are first described. Then, some examples of torque cancelling due to accurate calculations of dynamics are demonstrated, by showing the experimental results carried out on a prototype TCS system. The objects used in the experiments include rigid and flexible, outboard and inboard links, where difficult assumptions are normally required to consider the accurate dynamics.