Experiments on a flexible one-link manipulator

A single-link flexible arm setup has been built. The major objective is to use it as a testbed to explore and investigate new controller designs and the related control problems for this kind of plant. The experiments reported are concerned with model identification and several existing control law implementations. One interesting result obtained in identification is that all of the first three flexible modes of this plant tend to destabilize the system. The approximate linear model identified, which includes the viscous friction at the joint, is verified in the control experiments.<>