Contact-force control of one-link flexible arm without using physical parameters in the controller design

In this paper, we discuss a force control problem of one link flexible arm. To solve this problem, we propose a controller based on an infinite dimensional model. The proposed controller consists of a contact force and a time derivative of the strain at the root of the arm, and the physical parameters are not used in the implementation of the controller. Then, we analyze the stability of the closed-loop system, and we show that the closed-loop system can be exponentially stable by setting the feedback gains so that the eigenvalues are located on the left half-plane. In addition, we carried out numerical simulations to confirm its stability and robustness against the uncertainty of the physical parameters.