Flexible joint manipulator based on backstepping controller

Flexible joint manipulators are widely used in industries. The harmonic drive is often token as rigid component in the mechanical arm control. Nevertheless, several studies have shown that the joint flexibility characteristic in manipulator seriously reduces the performance of whole system especially when including actuator dynamic. This paper proposes a back-stepping method to control flexible joint manipulator including the dynamic of actuator to obtain the desired trajectory with minimum vibration. The controller is achieved by the analysis of Lyapunov stability to guarantee the stability of the system. Backstepping controller has been treated for position control and an hysteresis controller has been developed for current control. Simulation results through simulink environment are necessary to show the effectiveness of the adopted controllers.