At the University of Michigan’s S2A Lab, I worked on improving the performance of industrial robotic manipulators, focusing on UR5 arms. My work centered on understanding and mitigating different types of vibration during high speed operation. Our team began by characterizing the robot’s dynamic behavior through system identification, developing models that captured its real world response under varying conditions. Building on this, we explored path planning and torque control strategies to improve trajectory tracking and overall motion efficiency.
To address vibration in aggressive, high speed movements, we implemented a filtered B spline trajectory generation approach adapted from advanced 3D printing research. The attached video demonstrates the robot executing targeted joint motions under maximum load conditions to evaluate dynamics and test our controller gains.
As part of this project, we also designed and built a custom 3D printing end effector for the UR5.