Control of a Lightweight Flexible Robotic Arm Using Sliding Modes

These mechanisms are built using lighter, cheaper materials, which improve the payload to arm weight ratio, thus resulting in an increase of the speed with lower energy consumption. Moreover these lightweight arms are more safely operated due to the reduced inertia and compliant structure, which is very co nvenient for delicate assembly tasks and interaction with fragile objects, including human beings. However, the dynamic analysis and control of flexible-link manipulators is much more complex than the analysis and control of the equivalent rigid manipulators. From the modelling standpoint, the challenges are associated with the fact th at the non-linear rigid body motions are now strongly coupled with the distributed effects of the flexibility along the mechanical structure. This coupling varies with the system configuration and the load inertia.