Trajectory Control of Flexible Manipulators

We present some feedback control techniques recently developed for the exact solution of t rajectory tracking problems for manipulators with flexible elements. Two classes are considered: i) robots with rigid links but with elastic transmissions, in which flexibility is concentrated at the joints, and ii) robots with lightweight and/or long arms, where flexibility is distributed along the links. For robots with elastic joints, we introduce a generalized inversion algorithm for the synthesis of a dynamic feedback control law that gives input-output decoupling and full state linearization. For robots with flexible links, the end-effector trajectory tracking problem is solved based on the iterative computation of the link deformations associated with the desired output motion, combined with a state trajectory regulator. For both robot models, the control design is performed directly on the second-order dynamic equations.