Research project: Active Position Control of Flexible Structures
The speed of position control in many robotic applications is limited by the flexible modes of the structure. The flexible modes can sometimes be incorporated into the design of the overall control system if there is sufficient bandwidth in the main motor controller. An alternative strategy is to incorporate actuators and sensors into the flexible parts of the robotic system and use a high bandwidth local control system to suppress the flexible modes. The control problem then becomes similar to that of the control of unknown disturbances on smart structures.