Design and evaluation of a novel 3 d.o.f. flexible robot

Summary form only given. This paper aims to rectify a perceived imbalance between theory and experiment in the research literature on the control of flexible manipulators. The theme, is a novel 3 d.o.f. flexible manipulator, the "Rotabot", designed and constructed at the Oxford University Robotics Laboratory. The arm is an experimental concept design for a full sized industrial flexible arm, where the tractability of the final control problem has been a major design driver. This paper describes the different design features of the Rotabot. The key design properties are first demonstrated by simulation and then confirmed by extensive experimentation.