Tool-center-point control of a flexible link concrete pump with hydraulic limitations using quadratic programming

Tool-center-point control allows efficient and intuitive operation of a mobile concrete pump at task space level. Besides controlling the end-effector, numerous additional requirements and constraints act on the control system. The deformation of the flexible manipulator and volumetric flow rate constraints in the hydraulic actuation system effect the operation of the tool-center-point control. In this paper a deformation compensation and a volumetric flow rate constraint for a kinematic, constrained quadratic optimization (cQP) based tool-center point control is presented. The methods are validated by simulation for a flexible five-link concrete pump.