Title: Wave-based slewing and vibration control of a flexible arm

Authors: T.W. Yang, W.J. O'Connor, F. Ramos

Addresses: School of Computer and Information Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China. ' School of Electrical, Electronic and Mechanical Engineering, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. ' Department of Electrical, Electronic and Automation Engineering, University of Castilla-La Manch, Avda Camilo Jose Cela, Ciudad Real 13071, Spain

Abstract: Based on mechanical wave, this paper presents a simple control scheme to eliminate the residual vibration of a flexible arm, with a load at the tip, while achieving fast and accurate slewing control. The underlying dynamics of the flexible arm is modelled by a mass-spring system, and is interpreted as waves entering and leaving the system at the actuator-system interface. Accordingly, control input to the actuator is resolved into two components. From the start-up, a launching motion is assigned to the controller, to which an absorbing motion is added. The absorbing component is obtained from the delayed vibratory motion at the tip end, providing active damping. From the control point of view, the scheme is completely model-free. It is robust and effective, and proved via numerical simulations.

Keywords: flexible arms; mass-spring systems; wave-based control; mechanical waves; vibration control; residual vibration; active damping; robot arms; robot control; flexible robots.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISTA.2009.026085

International Journal of Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications, 2009 Vol.7 No.2, pp.157 - 170

Published online: 26 May 2009 *

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