Experimental study for trajectory tracking of a two-link flexible manipulator

Abstract

In this paper, the dynamical equations of a two-link flexible manipulator moving in the vertical plane are derived. The system is divided into a fast subsystem and a slow subsystem via the singular perturbation method. Considering the characteristics of a flexible manipulator, a compensated controller is designed for each joint angle. A combined robust control algorithm is proposed, which includes a sliding mode variable structure for the slow subsystem and H infinity control strategy for the fast subsystem. Experimental results of this combined robust controller are compared with those of the standard PID controller and a significant performance is well demonstrated.