Control of a Lightweight Flexible Robotic Arm Using Sliding Modes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a robust control method for lightweight flexible robotic arms, combining sliding mode control for rigid dynamics and LQR for flexible modes, demonstrated through experimental validation.

Contribution

It presents a novel composite control scheme that separately manages rigid and flexible dynamics for improved robotic arm performance.

Findings

Achieves good closed-loop tracking for both rigid and flexible modes

Combines sliding mode control with LQR for robust and optimal control

Experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Abstract

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 for the flexible dynamics. Experimental results show that this composite approach achieves good closed loop tracking properties both for the rigid and the flexible dynamics.