Control system design for macro/micro manipulator with application to electrodischarge machining

In this paper, a simple control methodology for macro/micro manipulator system is proposed. The macro/micro manipulator system consists of a multi-link rigid body manipulator as a macro manipulator and a machining unit mounted on the end-effector of the macro manipulator as a micro manipulator. It is shown that the state equations of the proposed macro/micro manipulator system are identical with the singular perturbed system. A simple method of control system design of this system can be derived from the singular perturbation theory. Simulation results show that the proposed control scheme perfectly compensates the tracking errors. An experimental verification of the proposed control algorithm is shown by applications to electrodischarge machining