Chapter 12 - Chaotic Path Planning for a Two-Link Flexible Robot Manipulator Using a Composite Control Technique

Abstract

In recent years, flexible manipulators (FMs) have become more attractive and are being used in many fields due to their advantages such as their light weight, low energy consumption, smaller size, etc. The desired trajectory tracking or path planning problem for a flexible robot manipulator is interesting and challenging. Path planning for a FM requires the desired reference signal, and various types of reference signals are used for this in the literature. The use of chaotic system signals as the desired signal for FM path planning remains little explored. The goal of this chapter is to explore the chaotic path planning/trajectory tracking of a two-link FM. Use of a chaotic signal as the desired reference/path creates extra challenges and complexity during control of the FM. In such a scenario, design of an appropriate control technique is challenging. With this motivation, we design a composite controller for the path planning/trajectory tracking of a two-link flexible robot manipulator in this chapter. The dynamics of the FM are modeled using an assumed modes method, and are then divided into two subsystems using the singular perturbation technique. These are called the slow subsystem (involved with rigid dynamics of the manipulator) and the fast subsystem (which incorporates flexible dynamics of the manipulator). Separate control techniques are designed for each subsystem. Dynamic surface control is designed for the slow subsystem for fast trajectory tracking/path planning of the chaotic desired signal. A backstepping controller is designed in the fast subsystem for quick suppression of link deflections. Simulation results confirm the better performance of the proposed composite technique.