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. Ac-cording t o the physical properties of a flexible manipulator, a two time-scale approach, namely, singular perturbation a p proach, is further utilized for thorough analysis and general controller design. It is shown tha t asymptotic motional track-ing 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 are performed for the proposed controller and satisfactory results are observed.