Determination of admissible tracking ranges on planar manipulator operations using adaptive controllers

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to propose a general method to determine the admissible tracking range without taking conservative design measures. A set of dynamic equations incorporated with the effect of link flexibility were derived in a vector matrix form for planar manipulators. This allows the mathematical model to be converted to a workable state variable form which is suitable for control and optimization studies. These equations are similar to that of the rigid manipulator case. The proposed method has no limitation on the number of links used. An adaptive tracking controller (ATC) is used to control a rigid manipulator and its equivalent flexible dynamic model respectively at the stage of simulation. By comparing their simulation results, the tracking admissible ranges can be found. The proposed method can be used as a design tool to reduce the weight of a manipulator for improving the operating efficiency. The method is not just for the adaptive controls, but it also can be used for any state space control schemes.