Streamlined Tuning Procedure for Stable PID Control of Flexible-Base Manipulators

The successful control of robotic manipulators mounted on flexible bases such as suspended mobile robots requires more sophisticated controllers than those employed for fixed-based manipulators. Solutions proposed in the literature often require expert knowledge to tune control parameters or lack stability guarantees when the dynamics of the flexible base lie close to those of the manipulator in the frequency domain. This letter addresses these issues by introducing a tuning procedure for the linear PID gains of a manipulator mounted on a flexible base that guarantees stability. A publicly available Python library implementing this procedure is also introduced to streamline the process for a wide array of user-defined models. The performance of a controller generated using this procedure is shown in simulations for a 3DOF manipulator mounted on an 8-legged tracked vehicle.