Experimental comparison of robust reduced-order hybrid position and force optimization techniques for a two-link flexible manipulator

This paper compares hybrid optimization schemes for designing robust reduced-order hybrid position and force controllers for a flexible two-link manipulator. As a baseline, these controllers are compared to full-order linear-quadratic-Gaussian (LQG) controllers. First, position and force controllers are designed separately and combined by the superposition method. Next, all the controllers are designed simultaneously using a direct optimization method. Experimental results show that the reduced-order controllers provide comparable performance to the full-order controllers. Also, results show that simultaneous optimization can provide better results than designing the force and position controllers separately.