Expert supervisory control for a two-link flexible robot

This investigation focuses on the design and implementation of rule-based controllers for end point position control of a two-degree-of-freedom robot with very flexible links. We begin by showing how our intuitive understanding of how to control the robot, that was gained over several years of experience, can be used in the construction of a direct fuzzy controller Next, we investigate the use of a two-level hierarchical rule-based controller with a simple upper-level “expert controller” that captures our knowledge about how to supervise the application of lower-level fuzzy controllers during movements in the robot workspace. Overall, the rule-based supervisory control results have proven to be extremely effective for vibration suppression in the laboratory test bed of this study comparing favorably (in terms of performance, design complexity, and implementation issues) to a variety of conventional techniques attempted to date