Robust control of single-link flexible manipulations with payload changes

This paper studies the control of single-link flexible arms with friction in the joint and changing payloads. An original robust controller has been developed to control the tip position in the case when the actual value of the payload is unknown, but its range of variation is predefined. Our controller is developed within the scope of a general control scheme proposed by Feliu-Rattan-Brown (1992), whose main features are: the control scheme is very robust to joint friction; it is based on frequency domain techniques; and it combines a feedforward term with the typical feedback term