Model and adaptive control for a 4-DOF manipulator with a flexible arm

The model of a manipulator with four degrees of freedom and a long flexible arm that includes the coupling effects between rigid and flexible links is used to design a decentralized control scheme. An additional control scheme is included to suppress the elastic variation of the flexible arm. The control scheme does not rely on the dynamic model and payload parameters since disturbance estimation and rejection techniques are used. The simulation results show that the model is accurate enough to design the controller and to perform further analysis on the system. The proposed controller closely tracks the desired input under variations of configuration, payload, and input reference signal