Identifying Moments of Inertia Parameters for Rigid-Body Manipulators

Among rigid-body dynamics parameters, the inertia is more difficult to identify or verify. In fact, some robot manufacturers provide information on masses and centers of masses, but not on inertias. This work will propose an experimental procedure in identifying inertia parameters through natural oscillation. The experiment proceeds by letting the rigid-body system achieve a linear second-order system response and its oscillation is measured. A well-defined value of the desired natural oscillation transforms the identification experiment into an optimization problem. A theorem is presented to justify the validity of the experimental approach, and experimental results are shown.