The need for light and flexible robots is greatly increasing in the industrial engineering environment. This paper presents the design and the implementation of a PID controller for a flexible planar manipulator. The controller synthesis and tuning is based on a very accurate dynamic model of the system and is applied to a significant test case, namely a five-bar closed-chain mechanism, driven by two electric motors. The chosen PID controller is described, and the experimental results are presented and discussed. The approach followed proves the practical usefulness of the dynamic model proposed even when applied to a complex test case.
