Passivity Based Backstepping Control of an Elastic Robot

In industry plants, a trade off between the requirements of speed and cost efficiency often results in lightweight constructions. However, this introduces elastic deflections causing vibrations and a loss in tracking precision. Hence, investigations in suitable models and control laws are necessary. By using the Projection Equation with a Ritz expansion, a set of nonlinear ordinary differential equations which describes the motion of the system is developed. The utilized control law is a combination of a feedforward and a. feedback scheme. The latter is based on backstepping methods, with respect to passivity ports. Finally experimental results are shown to verify the proposed control strategy.