Modeling and variable structure control of a vehicle flexible manipulator

In this paper, the mathematical modeling and the application of a new trajectory tracking control technique for hydraulic-driven rigid-flexible manipulator are concerned. To get a closer dynamic behavior of the real system, both the flexible manipulator linkage and the actuator dynamics are considered. The exact dynamic model of flexible manipulator is derived using Lagrange principle and assumed modes method. The partial decoupled dynamic equation is derived using nonlinear decoupling feedback control method. The whole dynamic model is established by a driven Jacobin matrix, which represents the coupling between hydraulic servo system and mechanical system. A variable structure controller with inverse dynamics is designed for trajectory tracking. To weaken the chattering of control signal, saturation function is used to instead of sign function. The experimental results investigate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches.