Simultaneous position and vibration control system for flexible link mechanisms

The control of lightweight and high speed manipulators requires special strategies to prevent and damp the vibrations caused by the inertial components of motion, especially when dealing with flexible-links mechanism. In this paper a constrained MPC (Model Predictive Control) system is proposed as an effective control strategy for position and vibration control of flexible links mechanism. Here this control system is applied to an electric actuated four-link planar mechanism with three flexible links laying on the horizontal plane. The effectiveness of this controller is evaluated by the means of exhaustive numerical simulations.