Design of a flexible manipulator experimental system

This chapter presents the design and development of a lightweight single-link planar constrained flexible manipulator. The design process involves selection of material types in respect of physical properties, selection of sensing and actuation types suitable for the system, interface mechanism, and hardware and software requirements. A number of key practical issues arising in the design process are highlighted and resolved. These include the actuator motor gearing mechanism and interference of power line with sensing data. The final design includes an aluminium type single-link manipulator driven by a printed circuit armature type permanent magnet DC motor. The sensing types include a shaft encoder and tachometer at the hub, an accelerometer at the end-point and a set of strain gauges along the manipulator arm. The manipulator thus designed and developed is featured throughout the book and used in case study exercising for demonstrating and verifying the various modelling and control design approaches presented in various chapters of the book.