Author(s)

Pedram Bagheri¹, Laleh Behjat¹, Qiao Sun²

¹Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
²Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

In this paper, a novel adaptive robust approach to modeling and control of a class of flexible-arm robots subject to actuators unmodeled dynamics is proposed. It is shown how real-time signals measured from a dynamical system can be utilized to improve the accuracy of the mathematical model of flexible robots. Given the elasticity of the robot’s arms, flexible manipulators have both passive and active degrees of freedom. A nonlinear robust controller is designed for the active degrees of freedom to enable the robot to follow desired trajectories in the presence of actuators unmodeled dynamics. Furthermore, it is shown that under some feasible conditions, another nonlinear robust controller is designed for the passive degrees of freedom. Moreover, to use the system response for model extraction, two auxiliary signals are proposed to provide sufficient information for improving the accuracy of the dynamics of the system numerically. Additionally, two adaptive laws are proposed in each case to update the two introduced auxiliary signals. As a result, the controller controls the passive degrees of freedom after the active degrees of freedom converge to their desired trajectories. Simultaneously, the information collected from the system to update the auxiliary signals enhances the model accuracy. In the end, simulation results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed controller.

Adaptive Control, Robust Control, Vibration Control

Bagheri, P. , Behjat, L. and Sun, Q. (2018) An Adaptive Robust Approach to Modeling and Control of Flexible Arm Robots. World Journal of Engineering and Technology, 6, 282-295. doi: 10.4236/wjet.2018.62017.