Modeling spatial multi-link flexible manipulator arms based on system modes

Industrial demand for high precision manipulators has lead to heavy, stiff, and therefore, expensive, inefficient, and potentially dangerous serial arm manipulators. The move towards lighter, and therefore, flexible manipulators has not matured, although there have been advancements in data processing capabilities, sensor technology, and control theory in the past couple of decades that could potentially reduce the problems with flexible serial manipulators. Most research in the past has focused on single link manipulators and planar robot arms and less research has been done on spatial multi-link robots. This work presents the derivation for a low-order model for spatial multi-link serial arms. Due to its low number of degrees of freedom this model can be used in real-time systems for control and estimation. The model is then verified by comparing its performance to results from commercial finite element software. Additional tests are performed against a flexible robot arm testbed.