Adaptive hybrid position/force control for robotic manipulators with compliant links

In this paper, we tackle the problem of nonlinear adaptive hybrid control of constrained robots with flexible links. According to the physical properties of a flexible manipulator, a two time-scale approach, namely singular perturbation approach, is further utilized for thorough analysis and general controller design. It is shown that asymptotic motion tracking can be effectively achieved, whereas the force regulation errors can be made arbitrarily small. For demonstration of the controller performance, experiments of a two-link flexible manipulator were performed for the proposed controller and satisfactory results observed.