Return to S. A. Bortoff's publication list.
Abstract: This paper presents a novel method to compensate the effects of flexibility in belt-driven drive trains. Such drives are found in robot manipulators, for example, where drive flexibility is undesirable. Unfortunately, the effects of flexibility can be difficult to compensate using the primary actuator, due to bandwidth limitations. By introducing a second actuator, which applies a force to the belt at a point between the pulleys, we show that the closed-loop dynamics can be made to be more ``stiff'' and even completely rigid. A backstepping design and a linear LQR design are outlined, and simulations of the latter illustrate improved performance over classical control which neglects the effects of flexibility.