An energy-based nonlinear control for two-link flexible manipulators

In this paper, we propose an energy-based nonlinear control for two-link flexible manipulators. Since the two-link flexible manipulator is an underactuated system which provides a challenge to control engineers and researchers. In order to control this kind of system more effectively, many new control theories and methods are explored to design controllers for the flexible manipulators. Among these methods, the energy-based control design method has gained a lot of attentions in these years, which can provide more physical insights in nonlinear control and also can provide a candidate for Lyapunov function directly, which is very important in proving the stability of the closed-loop system. Especially, the port-controlled Hamiltonian system and generalized canonical transformation have some advantages on the modeling and control design of these nonlinear systems. Therefore, we explore to control two-link flexible manipulators via generalized canonical transformation. Both the simulation and experimental results are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the controllers.