Force and position control of flexible manipulators

Abstract

While several control schemes have been proposed for force and position control of rigid robot manipulators, only a few related to flexible manipulators have been published so far. In this chapter the main force and position control strategies for flexible manipulators are surveyed and two different approaches are illustrated in depth. One achieves force and position regulation in an indirect way, by computing the joint and deflection variables in the presence of an external contact via a suit able closed-loop inverse kinematics scheme. The other exploits singular perturbation techniques to design force and position control schemes similar to those adopted for rigid robot manipulators, with an additional control action used to stabilise the fast dynamics related to link flexibility. A planar two-link flexible manipulator in contact with a compliant surface is considered, and simulation studies demonstrating the performance of the control techniques are presented and discussed.