Adaptive Control Of Flexible Joint Robot Manipulators

The adaptive control of flexible joint robot manipulators using composite control is presented first. This slow/fast control strategy consists of a slow adaptive controller designed for a rigid robot together with a fast controller to damp the elastic oscillations of the joints. The mathematical details and rigorous stability proofs of this algorithm are presented. Using the composite Lyapunov theory for singularly perturbed systems, sufficient conditions for adaptive trajectory tracking a presented. A second approach based on the method of integral manifolds for singularly perturbed systems is presented next. The known parameter case is treated and stability analysis is included. The method of integral manifolds is then extended to the adaptive case. Sufficient conditions for adaptive trajectory tracking are presented for both the general case and a special class of robot manipulators. Finally experimental and simulation results are included to illustrate different aspects of the results including adaptive instability mechanisms.