Variable structure control and anti-control of flexible joint manipulator with experimental validation

This paper presents a variable structure control and anti control for trajectory tracking and vibration control of a flexible joint manipulator. To study the effectiveness of the controllers, designed controller is developed for tip angular position control of a flexible joint manipulator. Based on Lyapunov stability theory for variable structure control, the nonlinear controller and some generic sufficient conditions for global asymptotic control are attained. Also in this study, the anti-control is applied to reduce the deflection angle of flexible joint system. To achieve this goal, the chaos dynamic must be created in the flexible joint system. So, the flexible joint system has been synchronized to chaotic gyroscope system. In this study, control and anti-control concepts are applied to achieve the high quality performance of flexible joint system. It is tried to design a controller which is capable to satisfy the control and anti-control aims. The performances of the proposed control are examined in terms of input tracking capability, level of vibration reduction, and time response specifications. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed method is validated through experimentation on QUANSER´s flexible-joint manipulator.