Position/vibration control of two-degree-of-freedom arms having one flexible link with artificial pneumatic muscle actuators

A manipulator with a light and thus flexible link would be advantageous over a rigid link in the sense that it is physically safer when it comes into contact with its environment than a manipulator with a rigid and thus heavy link, even though it is harder for a flexible link manipulator to be robustly controlled. On the other hand, if an actuator can deliver enough force while maintaining proper compliance, it would be advantageous for the sake of safety. An artificial pneumatic muscle-type actuator is an adequate choice in this case. In this work, position control problem of a two-degree-of-freedom arm system having a flexible second link with artificial pneumatic muscle-type actuators is addressed. A composite controller design method is proposed in the framework of the singular perturbation method. Various robust control schemes are designed in order to meet with payload variation, parameter uncertainty, unmodeled vibration mode, actuator dynamics both in the slow and the fast subsystems.