Control of a class of manipulators with a single flexible link: Part II. Observer-controller stabilization

In this paper, a controller and observer design is proposed for a class of multi-link manipulators with one flexible link. It is shown that it is possible to transform the state space equations of these manipulators into an equivalent set of equations which are almost linear. The controller then uses a nonlinear state feedback which is designed based only on the linear part of the transformed system equations. An observer is presented in which the estimated states converge to the actual states exponentially. Finally, it is shown that combining the observer with the controller results in a system which is input-output stable in a local sense