Optimal control of a flexible manipulator and controller order reduction

Presented is a control system design study for a flexible manipulator. The device consists of a DC electric motor drive connected via two flexible lin ks to an end effector for position control. The paper details in tutotrial fashion optimal control designs using both H-2 and H-infinity methods with dynamic weighting. The resulting controller is found to be fairly of high o rder for implementation and so controller order reduction is considered. It is observed that reduction of the controller order beyond a nominal amount cannot be done. A reason for this is postulated using novel perturbation m odels where it is found that the controller reduction problem is, in this c ase, a roadblock to practical implementation of the control. Copyright (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.