Adaptive force control of single-link mechanism with joint flexibility

An adaptive force control, scheme is presented that enables a single-link mechanism with joint flexibility to track a desired force trajectory. A dynamic model of the link system is derived, based on which a two-stage controller is constructed. It is shown that although all the system parameters including environment stiffness are unknown except for some of their bounds, all signals inside the closed-loop system remain uniformly bounded. Moreover, the force tracking error is driven to zero asymptotically. Simulation examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller