This paper presents an adaptive control case study involving a flexibl
e arm. The underlying control design consists in a judicious combinati
on of the pole placement concept and the generalized predictive contro
l design. The former allows one to incorporate a suitable tracking cap
ability while the latter is more advisable from practical use point of
view. A particular emphasis is put on the fundamental design features
of the adaptive controller, namely the tracking capability, the adapt
ation alertness and the robustness with respect to reduced order model
ling.