Notes on Newton-Euler formulation of robotic manipulators

The equations corresponding to Newton-Euler iterative method for the determination of forces and moments acting on the rigid links of a robotic manipulator are given a new treatment using composed vectors for the representation of both kinematical and dynamical quantities. It is shown that Lagrange equations for the motion of a holonomic system are easily found from the composed vectors defined in this note. Application to a simple model of an industrial robot shows that the method developed in these notes is efficient in solving the dynamics of a robotic manipulator. An example is developed, where it is seen that with the application of appropriate control moments applied to each arm of the robot, starting from a given initial position, it is possible to reach equilibrium in a final pre-assigned position.