Control of flexible-link manipulator

Abstract

Flexible-Iink manipulator has many advantages over classic rigid body manipulator in industrial and space applications. However, it also poses high requirements on controller design, to ensure the accurate tip position tracking and suppression of tip deflection/vibration. This thesis sets up the model, both linear sections and nonlinear sections, for a typical apparatus. It discusses, by simulations and experiments, the solutions for these control problems. PD controller plus conditional I control is found elective on rigid body tracking control, and P controller with second-order lowpass filter proves effective on the suppression of deflection/vibration. Optimized PIDP controllers are experimentally implemented and the system performances are shown. Further this thesis discusses a LQR controller which uses a ninth-order full state feedback. Experimental results using the LQR controllers show an improvement over the PIDP controller, particularly in the suppression of flexible beam deflection.