Feedback control of a flexible joint robot

This paper studies the problem of controlling a super-articulated robot manipulator with joint elasticity. A control design constraint involving generalized accelerations is first imposed for controlling the manipulator motion without storing elastic energy. A nonlinear control system formulation is then introduced to describe the constrained manipulator dynamics. Following a controllability and stabilizability analysis, a time-invariant discontinuous feedback law is constructed to control the manipulator to a desired configuration without excitation of its elastic degree of freedom. The effectiveness of the proposed feedback control law is illustrated through a simulation example.