Position Control of a Planar Single-Link Flexible Manipulator with Actuator Hysteresis

This paper develops an energy-based dual-loop position control method for the planar single-link flexible manipulator. The joint motor is unable to achieve the expected performance when the actuator is loose due to dust and lack of oil, which is manifested by the presence of input nonlinearity constraints in the system. We collect data on the input torque and output torque of the actuator to establish a hysteresis model, for which we design an inverse compensated inner loop controller so that the torque acting on the joint motor is accurate, and an outer loop controller based on the energy of the system to achieve position control of the flexible link. The proposed method is effective in solving the presence of input hysteresis constraints on the actuator and achieving position control of the flexible link manipulator.