Hybrid Control Strategy for Flexible Manipulators

The motion control of a planar manipulator with two flexible arms is studied. Dynamics are developed in Lagrange's formulation. A novel control system structure is proposed to control the joint position and velocity as well as deflection of the tip for each arm. First, nonlinear control law based on the equations of motion of the robot is presented and stability analysis is studied. Then, an adaptive neural controller is implemented to compensate structured and unstructured uncertainties. Efficiency of the new controller obtained by combining the two control laws is tested facing an important variation of the dynamic parameters of the flexible manipulator and compared to the nonlinear control taken solely. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the control strategy proposed.