Model reduction of flexible manipulators

We present a simple, efficient method for model reduction of flexible manipulators. The region in which the dominant poles are situated, the steady-state covariance value and the steady-state mean value respectively represent the transient and steady-state performances of a flexible manipulator system, and the reduced model must approximate the original system in these three respects as well as possible. We employed the proposed method to reduce the order of a flexible manipulator model such that a model-based scheme can be implemented. The method was illustrated by an example