CONTROL OF A 2-DEGREE-OF-FREEDOM LIGHT-WEIGHT FLEXIBLE ARM WITH FRICTION IN THE JOINTS

This article describes the design and control of a two-joint, two-link flexible arm. This flexible arm was built with very light links, has most of its mass concentrated at the tip and uses a special mechanical configuration to approximately decouple radial tip motions from angular tip motions. The lightweight design and decoupling maximize the efficiency of power transmitted to the load. An important problem when controlling lightweight flexible arms is the large Coulomb friction of the motors. A two-nested-loop multivariable controller is used to control the lightweight flexible arm with friction in the joints. The inner loop controls the position of the motors while the outer loop controls the tip position. The resolved acceleration method is generalized to control this flexible arm. The compliance matrix is used to model the oscillations of the structure and is included in the decoupling/linearizing term of this controller. Experimental results are presented. (C) 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.