Toward a dynamic model of robotic marionettes

Robotic marionettes are those mechatronic system in which strings that control motion of a puppet are driven by a puppeteer platform including motor-pulley modules. Systematic control of robotic marionettes is now still a tough problem, which several research groups have been attempting to solve. In this paper, we present dynamic models of the robotic marionette developed from Lagrange equation. Feed-forward control and feedback control are studied based on the dynamic models with the illustration of block diagrams. A process of identifying the parameters appearing in the dynamic models is presented in details. The modeling provides better insight of the system, and builds a mathematical platform to research the control and simulation of the marionette system.