A new controller design for a flexible one-link manipulator

A novel controller design for noncollocated flexible one-link manipulator arm tip position control based on variable structure sliding mode control is presented. Using the assumed-mode method, the plant model is derived. The discontinuous control law based on the variable structure system theory for the noncollocated manipulator tip position control is then designed. The position state variables are obtained directly from the inversion of the output submatrix multiplied by the sensor measurements. The velocity state variables are estimated through decoupled estimators-a separate first-order observer for each of the system's modes under consideration. Different sampling periods are used for the estimator and the controller. The performance of the controller is evaluated through a series of simulations, followed by an analysis of the designed control system. >