Real Time Mass Estimation of the Payload of a 3-$DOF$ Flexible Links Robot Using an Algebraic Technique Robust to Sensor Offset
Selma Benftima, Saddam Gharab, Andrés San-Millán, Vicente Feliú Batlle
Abstract
Accurate knowledge of a robot's payload mass is crucial for tasks and necessary for adjusting controller gains to improve trajectory tracking, especially in Flexible Link Robots (<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$FLR$</tex-math></inline-formula>s) with complex, marginally stable dynamics. Changes in payload mass can destabilize the control system, making real-time mass estimation before maneuvers essential. This letter presents an algebraic estimation technique for identifying payload mass in a 3-<inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$DOF$</tex-math></inline-formula> <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$FLR$</tex-math></inline-formula> using motor encoder data and strain gauge measurements while ensuring robustness to strain gauge offset and gravity. The method estimates vibration natural frequencies to determine the mass and compares estimators with other techniques like Prony's method, Recursive Least Squares, and Fast Fourier transform, demonstrating its efficiency in real experiments.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2025_realtimemassesti,
title = {Real Time Mass Estimation of the Payload of a 3-$DOF$ Flexible Links Robot Using an Algebraic Technique Robust to Sensor Offset},
author = {Selma Benftima and Saddam Gharab and Andrés San-Millán and Vicente Feliú Batlle},
booktitle = {RA-L 2025},
year = {2025}
}