SDRE applied to position and vibration control of a robot manipulator with a flexible link

This paper presents position and vibration control of a flexible robot composed of two rigid and one flexible links. Position is controlled by the current applied to the DC motor armature. To control vibrations of the flexible structure, Shape Memory Alloys (SMA) are used. Due to phase transformations, the SMA can change its stiffness through temperature variation, considering and taking advantage of this characteristic the vibration control is done. Control is achieved via the State Dependent Ricatti Equations (SDRE) technique, which uses suboptimal control and system local stability search. The simulation results show the feasibility of the proposed control for the considered system.