Modeling and Control of Flexible Joint Robotic Manipulator

Abstract

Robotic manipulators are often coupled with joint flexibilities which will result in unwanted vibrations during the operation of the manipulators and must be controlled or suppressed. In this paper we first developed the dynamics of a single rigid-link flexible-joint robotic manipulator mathematically. In order to obtain an accurate dynamic model, we take into account of the system factors, such as, joint flexibility, damping and friction. Then an impedance controller was designed to perform accurate positioning as well as residual vibration suppression during the operation based on the precise dynamic model. Numerical simulation and experimentation have also been done to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme. York University, Toronto, Ontario, M3J 1P3, Canada