Tracking control of the hydraulically actuated flexible manipulator

The remediation of single-shell radioactive waste storage tanks is one of the urgent tasks of the Department of Energy that challenge state-of-the-art equipment and methods. The use of long-reach manipulators is being seriously considered for this remediation task. Because of high payload capacity and high length-to-cross-section ratio requirements, these long-reach manipulator systems are expected to use hydraulic actuators and to exhibit significant structural flexibility. The controller has been designed to compensate for the hydraulic actuator dynamics by using a load-compensated velocity feedforward loop and to increase the bandwidth by using a pressure feedback loop. Shaping filter techniques have been applied as a feedforward controller to avoid structural vibrations during operation. Among various types of shaping filter methods investigated an approach, referred to as a "feedforward simulation filter" that uses embedded simulation, has been presented.