In recent years, minimally-invasive surgical systems based on flexible robotic manipulators have met with success. One major advantage of the flexible manipulator approach is its superior safety characteristics as compared to rigid manipulators. However, their soft compliant structure, in combination with internal friction, results in poor position and force regulation which have limited their ...

In this paper a general formulation for finding the maximum allowable dynamic load (MADL) of flexible link mobile manipulators is presented. The main constraints used for the algorithm presented are the actuator torque capacity and the limited error bound for the end-effector during motion on the given trajectory. The precision constraint is taken into account with two boundary lines in plane w...

This paper presents a novel robust fractional PIλ controller design for flexible joint electrically driven robots. Because of using voltage control strategy, the proposed approach is free of problems arising from torque control strategy in the design and implementation. In fact, the motor's current includes the effects of nonlinearities and coupling in the robot manipulator. Therefore, cancella...

This paper is concerned with the dynamic motion analysis and the planning of maximum payload path of flexible manipulators. The finite element method was employed for dynamic modelling of the system and the motion of the model was considered as a combination of the rigid displacement and the elastic deformation of each link. Each manipulator link was treated as a finite number of elements and t...

In this paper a new control strategy is introduced for tip trajectory tracking of flexible-joint manipulators driven by harmonic drives. The proposed controller incorporates friction compensating torque (FCT) and composite controller torque (CCT), which compensate for the friction in the harmonic drives and the flexibility of the joints, respectively. The FCT is a new controller which includes ...

In this paper we determine all non-trivial self-motions of TSSM manipulators with two parallel rotary axes which equals the determination of all flexible octahedra where one vertex is an ideal point. This study also closes the classification of these motions for the whole set of parallel manipulators of TSSM type. Our approach is based on Kokotsakis meshes and the reducible compositions of sphe...

This paper presents a novel robust fractional PIλ controller design for flexible joint electrically driven robots. Because of using voltage control strategy, the proposed approach is free of problems arising from torque control strategy in the design and implementation. In fact, the motor's current includes the effects of nonlinearities and coupling in the robot manipulator. Therefore, cancella...

Accuracy and energy consumption are key aspects to be considered when using serial manipulators in industrial environment. Affordable operational and maintenance costs are very important issues for automated processes. However, high performance robots also require increasing precision when performing sophisticated tasks. In this paper a method for optimal path planning and task adjustment of co...

This paper addresses the impedance control problem for flexible joint manipulators. An impedance controller structure is proposed, which is based on an exact decoupling of the torque dynamics from the link dynamics. A formal stability analysis of the proposed controller is presented for the general tracking case. Preliminary experimental results are given for a single flexible joint.

In recent years, establishing more and more explicit, complete and accurate dynamic models for the special category of flexible link manipulators has been a formidable challenging and still open problem in robotics research. This chapter is devoted to a methodological presentation of the application of Timoshenko beam (TB) theory (TBT) concepts to the mathematical description of flexible link r...