Author(s)

R.J. Adams, P. Apkarian & J.-P. Chretien

Abstract

Control approaches for a two-link flexible manipulator are studied in the context of robust synthesis for Linear Parameter-Varying systems. Differ- ent treatments of the inertia matrix variations in the manipulator system are examined in three control law design formulations. The first two designs are based upon scaled H^ or structured singular value synthesis. The third design makes use of a new approach for robust gain-scheduled synthesis. Re- sults show that this gain-scheduling technique maximizes both performance and robustness over the entire range of manipulator configurations. 1 Introduction Flexible manipulators can take many forms and serve many purposes. The best known flexible manipulator is probably the space shuttle's remote ma- nipulator system (RMS), but there are many others which are much

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