Identification and control for a manipulator with two flexible links

Abstract

The authors investigate the effectiveness of an online identification scheme for tracking the modal frequencies of a two-link flexible mechanism executing large-angle movements and carrying an unknown payload. A decentralized, gain-scheduled, adaptive control scheme is employed in conjunction with the identification scheme in order to illustrate the feasibility of online controller adjustment for endpoint position control in terms of vibration suppression after large-angle movements. Motivation for adopting the autoregressive-moving-average-model perspective is based on the convenient representation for online controller tuning and on the assumption that flexibility dynamics, for small deflections after a nonlinear large-angle motion, exhibit linear behavior. Experimental results are presented for a two-link planar mechanism in which both links are very flexible.