Abstract
In order to control robot arms with high speed and high accuracy, it is necessary to evaluate sensitivities of robot arms, which are the effects of link parameters errors, torque calculation errors and disturbances on joint variables and end-effector's position and orientation. This paper proposes the sensitivity analysis of robot arms using the concept of controllability and observability measures in linear systems. Three sensitivities of robot arms are defined by the degrees of controllability, observability and output-controllability. The relation between the sensitivities and manipulatability is discussed. Furthermore, the magnitude of the deviation caused by these errors from a nominal trajectory can be evaluated using sensitivities.
