PID, LQR, State Feedback, and Feed-forward Controllers on a Two-Link Robotic Manipulator: A Simulation-Based Comparison

This paper presents a comparative analysis of different control strategies applied to a two-link robotic manipulator. Robot control is crucial when it comes to real-time implementation of the control algorithms, hence a good theoretical analysis becomes important. Three different control algorithms have been presented for a two-link manipulator with their simulation results. The dynamics of the robotic manipulator are evaluated using the Euler-Lagrangian method. The robot model featuring some nonlinearity has been handled by linearising the equation of motion of the two-link robot. State-space model of the linearized version is designed and a proportional-integralderivative controller, linear quadratic regulator, state-feedback, and state-feedforward controllers are applied. State feedback and feedforward have been combined together and implemented to observe their effectiveness. Simulations are carried out on MATLAB to compare the effectiveness of individual control techniques. The performance analysis of individual joints has been presented. A discussion on the merits and demerits of a better approach has been furnished.