Tip Motion Control and Vibration Suppression of Flexible Manipulator with Controllable Damping

The flexible manipulator is widely used in many fields due to its advantages of light weight, fast response, and low energy consumption. However, due to the flexible structure of the flexible manipulator, it is easy to generate tip vibration, and difficult to achieve high-speed and high-precision motion control. In this paper, the dynamics model of the flexible manipulator system with controllable damping is established based on the Lagrange method and damping force constraining equation. Using the singular perturbation principle, the dynamics model is decomposed into fast and slow subsystems, where the slow subsystem represents the large-scale rigid motion, and the fast subsystem represents the small-scale vibration. A two-time scale composite control strategy is proposed, which consists of an adaptive robust controller for the slow system and a LQR controller for the fast system, to achieve tip vibration suppression and precise motion control. Through simulation, the effectiveness of the two-time scale control strategy of the flexible manipulator system with controllable damping is proved.