PDE Model-Based Boundary Control Design for a Flexible Robotic Manipulator With Input Backlash

This brief considers the control design problem for a flexible robotic manipulator. Our control strategies are to: 1) move the manipulator to the certain desired angle; 2) suppress the vibration at the neighborhood of the desired angle; and 3) handle the backlash nonlinearity existing in the practical system. Based on the infinite-dimensional dynamic model, a boundary controller with input backlash is designed to achieve the control aims. An output feedback method is adopted to represent a controller to handle the feedback signals that are not able to be measured directly. The effectiveness of the designed controllers and the stability of the system are demonstrated by theoretical analysis, numerical simulations, and physical experiments.