Tracking Control of a Single Link Flexible Manipulator

Abstract

This work presents an artificial time delay based position and trajectory controller to handle vibrations of a single link flexible manipulator (SLFM), where dynamic equations of motion are derived using assumed mode method (AMM) and Decoupled Natural Orthogonal Complement (DeNOC) matrices. Initially the procedure for deriving dynamic equation of motions involving inertia matrix, vector of convective inertia, gravity vector, and strain energy vector for an n-link flexible manipulator is discussed considering two modes in transverse direction and then it is extended for deriving equation of motion for a single link flexible manipulator. Further, a comparative study between a conventional feedback based PD and an artificial time delay-based controller is done to point out the superior performance of the time delayed controller for suppressing vibrations.