Control of Flexible Payloads Grasped by Actuated Grippers Undergoing Large Rigid-Body Motions: Part II — Controllability and Observability

Abstract

Part I of this work models the dynamics of a flexible payload grasped by an actuated gripper undergoing large rigid body motion by a robotic manipulator. In Part II, the controllability and observability conditions of the system are discussed. In Part I, the dynamic model of the actuated flexible payload is derived using the component mode synthesis (CMS) method with addition of actuator constraint, fixed-interface vibration and quasi-static modes. Here, the two-time scale modeling (TSM) technique is employed taking advantage of the two-time scale behavior between the quasi-static modes and vibration modes in the dynamic model. Due to the complexity of the resulting system, the controllability and observability conditions are not trivial. Hence, the controllability and observability study addressed herein becomes essential in showing the advantages of using the CMS and TSM techniques in control system design for the problem. A simulation example demonstrates that simultaneous vibration and quasi-static deformation control is achievable by proper selection of each type of modes.