On vibration control of a concrete pump

Using robots for very wide operating ranges, as in the case of concrete pumps, requires that elastic deformations of the links be taken into account. From a structural point of view a rigid design is impossible. In addition, these applications demand actuators with a significant power density, able to produce high forces with fast response which can be achieved profitably by the use of hydraulic actuators. Hydrostatic differential cylinders are widely used because of their simple construction. Although conventional rigid multilink industrial robots modeling can be done schematically by standard techniques, it is a considerable problem to obtain an accurate analytical model for multilink flexible robots actuated by hydrostatic differential cylinders. A recent model independent approach to active damping control for multilink flexible robots where the actuators are controlled to act like virtual spring-damper-systems is used in this paper for vibration control of a concrete pump.