This chapter focuses on the dynamic control issues of lightweight robots as well as flexible joint robots. The goal is to increase the bandwidth and the accuracy of the trajectory tracking control. Besides the joint flexibility, the control design considers the dynamics of the electric motor in AC-form i.e. the three phase permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). The final system model is a f...

A common architecture for torque controlled humanoid robots consists in two nested loops. The outer loop generates desired joint/motor torques, and the inner loop stabilises these desired values. In doing so, the inner loop usually compensates for joint friction phenomena, thus removing their inherent stabilising property that may be also beneficial for high level control objectives. This paper...

Real-time robust adaptive fuzzy fractional-order control of electrically driven flexible-joint robots has been addressed in this paper. Two important practical situations have been considered: the fact that robot actuators have limited voltage, and the fact that current signals are contaminated with noise. Through of a novel voltage-based fractional order control for an integer-order dynamical ...

The formulation and optimization of joint trajectories for humanoid robots is quite different from this same task for standard robots because of the complexity of the humanoid robots’ kinematics. In this paper we exploit the similarity between the movements of a humanoid robot and human movements to generate joint trajectories for such robots. In particular, we show how to transform human motio...

The robotics literature of the last two decades contains many important advances in the control of flexible joint robots. This is a survey of these advances and an assessment for future developments, concentrated mostly on the control issues of flexible joint robots.

Robots are now requested to perform more and more complex tasks such as rescue activities in quite practical environments such as rough terrains. It is necessary for robots to have versatile joints that can flexibly adapt to such task environments and realize complex motions. It is desired to develop small and low cost actuators which can flexibly adapt to task environment. Flexibility in robot...

This study presents resonance-based control methods proposed by the authors for multi-joint robots. The proposed control methods adjust stiffness of mechanical elements installed in each joint of the robots to minimize actuator torque while generating desired periodic motions. Some of these control method adjust not only stiffness but also motion patterns to reduce further actuator torque. Adva...