Robust Tracking of a Lightweight Manipulator System

A robust control design for high performance joint trajectory tracking of a flexible lightweight manipulator system is proposed. The design is based on a combined controller-observer scheme involving the sliding manifold approach and the optimal interpolation technique. This controller provides the designer with an enhanced joint tracking performance when the system is subject to parametric variations due to structural disturbances caused by link flexibility and load uncertainties. The parametric variations are handled by sliding control and the estimation of the nonlinearly excited elastic dynamics by an optimal interpolator of the structure's dynamic responses. The design procedure is progressive, i.e., we start with a basic controller and then modify it in order to improve the performance. Closed loop simulations with the various designed controllers are used to validate the analytical results and to help choosing the most suitable one.

[1]  W. Book Recursive Lagrangian Dynamics of Flexible Manipulator Arms , 1984 .

[2]  Jean-Jacques E. Slotine,et al.  Sliding controller design for non-linear systems , 1984 .

[3]  Frank L. Lewis,et al.  Control of Robot Manipulators , 1993 .

[4]  Irmgard Flugge-Lotz,et al.  Discontinuous Automatic Control , 1953 .

[5]  F. Karray,et al.  On the elastic mode estimation aspect of a class of multibody flexible systems , 1994, IEEE Trans. Autom. Control..

[6]  Bruno Siciliano,et al.  A Singular Perturbation Approach to Control of Lightweight Flexible Manipulators , 1988, Int. J. Robotics Res..

[7]  Bruno Siciliano,et al.  Trajectory control of a non-linear one-link flexible arm , 1989 .

[8]  V. J. Modi,et al.  Robust enhancement of the slew performance of a class of new generation spacecraft , 1993, Proceedings of 32nd IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

[9]  Wayne J. Book,et al.  Experiments in optimal control of a flexible arm , 1985 .

[10]  Fakhreddine Karray,et al.  On the robust control aspect of a class of systems involving interconnected rigid and flexible appendages: case study , 1993 .

[11]  E. Schmitz,et al.  Modeling and control of a planar manipulator with an elastic forearm , 1989, Proceedings, 1989 International Conference on Robotics and Automation.

[12]  M. Benati,et al.  Dynamics of Chain of Flexible Links , 1988 .

[13]  R. Daniel,et al.  Perturbation Techniques for Flexible Manipulators , 1991 .

[14]  Alessandro De Luca,et al.  Closed-form dynamic model of planar multilink lightweight robots , 1991, IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cybern..

[15]  Bruno Siciliano,et al.  Joint-Based Control of a Nonlinear Model of a Flexible Arm , 1988, 1988 American Control Conference.