The impact of local masses and inertias on the dynamic modelling of flexible manipulators

After a brief review of the recent literature dealing with flexible multi-body modelling for control design purpose, the paper first describes three different techniques used to build up the dynamic model of SECAFLEX, a 2 d.o.f. flexible in-plane manipulator driven by geared DC motors : introduction of local fictitious springs, use of a basis of assumed Euler-Bernouilli cantilever-free modes and of 5th order polynomial modes. This last technique allows to take easily into account local masses and inertias, which appear important in real-life experiments. Transformation of the state space models obtained in a common modal basis allows a quantitative comparison of the results obtained, while Bode plots of the various interesting transfer functions relating input torques to output in-joint and tip mea-surements give rather qualitative results. A parametric study of the effect of angular configuration changes and physical parameter modifications (including the effect of rotor inertia) shows that the three techniques give similar results up to the first flexible modes of each link when concentrated masses and inertias are present. From the control point of view, “pathological” cases are exhibited : uncertainty in the phase of the non-colocated transfer functions, high dependence of the free modes in the rotor inertia value. Robustness of the control to these kinds of uncertainties appears compulsory

Flexible joint control : robustness analysis of the collocated and non-collocated feedbacks

In this paper, we propose a discussion on the robustness and performance properties of a proportional-derivative controller applied to a very flexible joint. Because of the flexible mode due to in-joint compliance, the classical collocated control does not allow to obtain good rigid mode dynamics with a correct phase margin in low and high frequency, and the non-collocated control does not allow to damp correctly the rotor mode. The simultaneous analysis of discrete root loci and Nichols plots leads to a phase control law with a derivative term built from both input and output velocities. Simulations taking into account various real non-linearities and measurement imperfections are proposed to validate this improved control design

Gain-scheduling through continuation of observer-based realizations-applications to H∞ and μ controllers

The dynamic behavior of gain scheduled controllers is highly depending on the state-space representations adopted for the family of lienar controllers designed on a set of operating conditions. In this paper, a technique for determining a set of consistent and physically motivated linear state-space transformations to be applied to the original set of linear controllers is proposed. After transformation, these controllers exhibits an-observer-based structure are therefore easily interpolted and implemented

Lateral fligh control design for a highly flexible aircraft using a nonsmooth method

This paper describes a nonsmooth optimization technique for designing a lateral flight control law for a highly flexible aircraft. Flexible modes and high-dimensional models pose a major challenge to modern control design tools. We show that the nonsmooth approach offers potent and flexible alternatives in this difficult context. More specifically, the proposed technique is used to achieve a mix of frequency domain as well as time domain requirements for a set of different flight conditions

The problem with the SURF scheme

There is a serious problem with one of the assumptions made in the security proof of the SURF scheme. This problem turns out to be easy in the regime of parameters needed for the SURF scheme to work. We give afterwards the old version of the paper for the reader's convenience.Comment: Warning : we found a serious problem in the security proof of the SURF scheme. We explain this problem here and give the old version of the paper afterward

Launcher attitude control: some additional design and optimization tools

This paper deals with the launcher attitude control during atmospheric flight. A two step approach combining an H1 control design and an optimization procedure is proposed. The first step is multi-objective stationary H1 design based on the Cross Standard Form. It provides easily a first rough solution from a few physical tuning parameters. The second step is a fine tuning using an multi-constraint satisfaction algorithm. This algorithm enables the certification criteria computed on the validation model to be met and is also used to propagate the nominal tuning to the full flight envelope

Six-axis decentralized control design for spacecraft formation flying mission

This contribution addresses the control design for the three-spacecraft formation flying interferometry mission Pegase. The operational mode considered is the high-precision nulling phase. The control design has as major objective the minimization of the variance of the controlled outputs, e.g. the optical path difference. The payload performance demands are shown to be fulfilled in spite of orbital disturbances, solar radiation pressure as well as sensor and actuator noise. Furthermore, a novel iterative algorithm is proposed, capable of designing decentralized H2-suboptimal controllers. These controllers consist of a set of individual closed loops on board the different spacecraft which only use locally available measurements, forces and torques. This approach reduces communication bandwidth and enhances robustness concerning faulty communication links. Finally, the performance loss due to decentralization is investigated

Launcher attitude control: discrete-time robust design and gain-scheduling

In this paper, a robust multi-objective design for the control of a launcher during atmospheric flight is investigated. This approach is based on the Cross Standard Form formulation which allows to incorporate the various specifications of the launcher problem in a streamlined manner. An important feature of this approach is that a non-conventional LQG/LTR approach, required to satisfy time-domain specifications, can be embedded into a more general standard problem in order to account for frequency-domain robustness constraints. The specific form of this standard problem is also very interesting for gain scheduling

A Frequency-Limited H2 Model Approximation Method with Application to a Medium-Scale Flexible Aircraft

In this paper, the problem of approximating a medium-scale MIMO LTI dynamical system over a bounded frequency range is addressed. A new method based on the SVD-Tangential model order reduction framework is proposed. Grounded on the frequency-limited gramians defined in [5], the contribution of this paper is to propose a frequency-limited iterative SVD-Tangential interpolation algorithm (FL-ISTIA) to achieve frequency-limited model approximation without involving weighting filters. The efficiency of the approach is addressed both on standard benchmark and on an industrial flexible aircraft model