Tip-deflection Tracking of Flexible Manipulator through Equi-dominance Controller

A control scheme based on equi-dominance criterion is proposed for flexible manipulator tip positioning. The flexible manipulator system with angular position controller is designed in such a way that the asymptotes of the inner-loop system pass through the zeros of the controller. This ensures the same decaying rate of the closed-loop poles of the inner-loop system. Further, tip position controller is designed for precise tracking of tip deflection. Feedforward controllers are incorporated in the control scheme to generate the reference for the angular position and excitation voltage of the motor. The experimental investigation of the proposed method on the single-link flexible manipulator proves the efficient tip positioning of the manipulator.