Dynamic analysis of flexible manipulators, a literature review

In this paper a survey of the literature related to dynamic analyses of flexible robotic manipulators has been carried out. Both link and joint flexibility are considered in this work and an effort has been made to critically examine the methods used in these analyses, their advantages and shortcomings and possible extension of these methods to be applied to a general class of problems. Papers are classified according to modeling, control and experimental studies. In case of modeling they are subdivided according to the method of analysis and number of links involved in the analysis. An effort has been made to include the works of a huge variety of researchers working in this field and a total of 433 papers created in the years 1974–2005 have been reviewed in this work.