Robot simulator

Citation

Hollingum, J. (2001), "Robot simulator", Industrial Robot, Vol. 28 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/ir.2001.04928dad.013

Robot simulator

Robot simulatorKeywords Robots, Simulation

Applicants: Lars-Olof Oehberg (SE), Bernt-Ove Hedman (SE)Patent number: WO9960326Publication date: 25 November 1999Title: Robot simulator

The invention describes a method for simulating an actual missile, by means of a missile simulator, aircraft system which comprises a weapons system, where the missile is controlled from the weapons system by an error signal in a control loop by means of the error signal positioning a target seeker in the missile and through the sending back of the target seeker's position to the weapon system via an actual value signal, where: the target seeker in the missile is commanded by the weapons system to adopt a predetermined position; the missile simulator measures the control loop's error signal, generates an actual value for the position of the target seeker and sends the actual value to the weapons system; the weapons system calculates a new error signal for the control loop; and where the second and third steps are repeated during the test. By using the method, an actual missile is not needed during the testing. Simulation of a missile according to the aspect of the invention permits continuous measurement of the command signal in the aircraft system. The principles of simulation of the missile can be summarized as follows: a signal with the command position for the missile's target seeker is received by a summing unit in the aircraft's weapons system. In addition, the signal for the actual position of the target seeker in the missile is received by the said summing unit. A trouble signal equivalent to the deviation between the command position and the actual position is obtained as an output signal from the summing unit. The trouble signal is used as a control signal for the target seeker. During missile simulation the trouble signal first passes a hardware interface which adapts the trouble signal to a computer model for the missile's target seeker. The error in amplitude and angle of the vector which specifies the direction to the target is sent from the interface to the computer model. The behaviour of the actual missile is simulated in the computer model, whereupon a simulated actual value of amplitude and angle of the position of the target seeker is sent back to the interface, where an actual value signal adapted to the weapons system is created. The said actual value signal is inverted so as to give a negative contribution when the actual value signal is added in the said summing unit. During simulation there are time-continuous signals before the interface and time-discrete signals after the interface, where these signals are fed to the computer model. The actual missile operates only with time-continuous signals. The time-discrete signals are obtained by a sampling of the input time-continuous signals. It is important here that the signals at the moment of sampling as closely as possible assume the values that they would in the actual time-continuous system at corresponding points in time and that noise and interference are suppressed. The actual position (actual value) of the target seeker can be simply recorded using the method presented here, since the actual value is produced by a computer. When using a real missile in the test the actual value must be measured instead. This is unnecessary, since it is precisely this measurement in the weapons system that is, for example, verified by the aspect of the invention.