In many manufacturing and automobile industries, flexible components need to be positioned with the help of coordinated operations of manipulators. This paper deals with the robust design of a control system for two planar rigid manipulators moving a flexible object in the prescribed trajectory while suppressing the vibration of the flexible object. Dynamic eq...

This paper presents a robust control scheme for flexible link robotic manipulators, which is based on considering the flexible mechanical structure as a system with slow (rigid) and fast (flexible) modes that can be controlled separately. The rigid dynamics is controlled by means of a robust sliding-mode approach with wellestablished stability properties while an LQR optimal design is adopted f...

In this paper, a new formulation along with numerical solution for the problem of finding a point-to-point trajectory with maximum load carrying capacities for flexible manipulators is proposed. For rigid manipulators, the major limiting factor in determining the Dynamic Load Carrying Capacity (DLCC) is the joint actuator capacity. The flexibility exhibited by light weight robots or by robots o...

Flexible-link manipulators have high demand in many industrial and space applications. This is simply because they have many advantages over the rigid manipulators such as light weight, fast response time and large payload capacity. Optimal trajectories for a two-link rigid-flexible manipulator based on trajectory tracking and obstacle avoidance criteria are designed using Generalized Pattern S...

The need for fast and precise robots in the industrial environment, capable of attending the productivity and quality demands and that allow a high volume of work, needs the usage of manipulators with flexible links. Besides this, aeronautic applications demand the usage of long and thin arms, which leads to remarkable structural changes. Therefore, the development of manipulators with structur...

A Space Free-Flying Robot (SFFR) includes an actuated base equipped with one or more manipulators to perform on-orbit missions. Distinct from fixed-based manipulators, the spacecraft (base) of a SFFR responds to dynamic reaction forces due to manipulator motions. In order to control such a system, it is essential to consider the dynamic coupling between the manipulators and the base. Explicit d...

Ideally, one would design a manipulator to be as rigid as possible. However there may be some occasions when the manipulator will be flexible. This will occur when the manipulator is very long and lightweight. Traditional flexible manipulators are difficult to control. This is because the manipulator has a nonlinear position variant behavior. Unfortunately using a large gear reduction does not ...

Force control is very important for many practical manipulation tasks of robot manipulators, such as, assembly, grinding, deburring that associate with interaction between the end-effector of the robot and the environment. Force control of the robot manipulator can be break down into two categories: Position/Force Hybrid Control and Impedance Control. The former is focused on regulation of both...

Flexible-link robotic manipulators are mechanical devices whose control can be rather challenging, among other reasons because of their intrinsic under-actuated nature. This chapter presents various experimental studies of diverse robust control schemes for this kind of robotic arms. The proposed designs are based on several control strategies with well defined theoretical foundations whose eff...

Robotic manipulators are widely used to help in dangerous, monotonous, and tedious jobs. Most of the existing robotic manipulators are designed and built in a manner to maximize stiffness in an attempt to minimize the vibration of the end-effectors. This high stiffness is achieved by using heavy material and bulky design. Hence, the existing heavy rigid manipulators are shown to be inefficient ...