Fuzzy logic control of a moving flexible manipulator

Abstract

Flexible manipulators provide significant advantages over commonly used rigid robots, such as high operation speed and high power efficiency. However, the controller design for these manipulators is very complicated because of the nonlinear vibration dynamics. In this paper, a rule-based scheme for implementing a fuzzy logic controller to drive a flexible manipulator is proposed. The phase portrait plane has been adopted to build the rules based on mathematical reasoning rather than the conventional trial and error method, which is dependent on the operator's experience. In order to improve the performance of the fuzzy logic controller, an adjustable weight parameter has been introduced to build the control table. A set of variable width triangular membership functions is used to improve the resolution of the controller. The effectiveness of the control law has been demonstrated with numerical simulation.