Design and analysis of a facility for free - Floating flexible robotic manipulators

The development of the Waterloo Flexible Link Experimental (WATFLEX) facili ty was initiated at the University of Waterloo to provide resources for con ducting experiments involving the dynamics and control of flexible robotic manipulators - specifically, two dimensional dynamic mass capture, impact d ynamics and vibration suppression. The system consists of a number of diffe rent subsystems including the robotic manipulator, motion and deflection se nsors, the digital controller, the data acquisition system, and the pneumat ic system that floats the manipulator on a support structure. In this paper , the design and current status of each of these subsystems is described. E xperimental analysis results of the support table, the data acquisition sys tem, and some analog sensors are presented and analyzed.