Abstract
This paper presents the optimal trajectory planning for a one-link flexible manipulator to suppress the residual vibration. In the trajectory planning, we express the joint angle by cubic spline function, and then use the tabu search method to find an optimal trajectory. The optimal trajectory thus obtained has minimum vibration requirement. The manipulator is modeled by considering axial inertia based on inextensibility condition. The Lagrangian approach in conjunction with the assumed modes method is applied to obtain the equation of motion of the manipulator that is used in the trajectory planning. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by experiments.