Experimental Study on Robust Control of One Link Flexible Arm via Composite Control

Abstract

The modeling error arising in modeling of flexible manipulators is mainly classified into two uncertainties. One is the structured uncertainty caused by the unknown and changing parameters, and another the unstructured uncertainty caused by the residual modes of elastic vibrations. In order to improve the control performance, we have proposed a robust control strategy for the trajectory tracking control of multi-link flexible manipulators. This controller was designed on the basis of the model decomposition by an integral manifold approach and the composite control.
In this paper, we show the experimental study on the effectiveness of the control strategy proposed in the previous paper. For this purpose, we apply the control strategy to the one link flexible arm. This controller consists of the slow controller based on VSS control and the fast controller based on strain feedback. By performing some experiments, the effectiveness of the proposed controller is discussed from the viewpoint of the adequacy for the control strategy based on the model decomposition, the slow controller based on VSS control, and the tip position control based on integral manifold.