Force control of constrained flexible manipulators

Discusses the force control of flexible manipulators. Since the force control of flexible manipulators with one or two planar links using the distributed-parameter modeling has been the subject of a considerable number of publications, real time computations of the force control schemes are possible. But, application of those control schemes to multi-link spatial flexible manipulators is fairly complicated. In this paper the authors apply a concise hybrid position/force control scheme to a flexible manipulator using lumped-parameter modeling. Hamilton´s principle is applied to deriving the equations of motion and then, a state-space model is obtained by Lagrange´s method. Finally, a comparison between simulation and experimental results is presented to show the performance of the authors´ method