Output tracking control of a flexible robot arm

In this paper, we address the problem of output feedback tracking control of a flexible robot arm. The robot arm is modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam. The beam is clamped to a motor at one end and attached to a force actuator at the other. Based on measurements at the boundaries, a uniformly exponentially stable observer is proposed. Using the information from the observer, a tracking controller which allows the robot arm to follow time-varying references and damp out the elastic vibrations is designed. The existence, uniqueness and stability of solutions of the closed loop system and the observer are based on semigroup theory. Numerical simulation results are included to illustrate the performance of the proposed control laws and the proposed observer. The simulation results are in agreement with the theoretical results.