Tip position control of a flexible-link manipulator with neural networks

To control the tip position of a flexible-link manipulator, a neural network (NN) controller is proposed in this paper. The dynamics error used to construct NN controller is derived based on output redefinition approach. Without the filtered tracking error, the proposed NN controller can still guarantee the closed-loop system uniformly asymptotically stable as well as NN weights bounded. Furthermore, the tracking error of desired trajectory can converge to zero with the proposed controller. For comparison an NN controller with filtered tracking error is also designed for the flexible-link manipulator. Finally, simulation studies are carried out to verify the theoretic results.