Int. J. Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 2, No.

3, 2009 311

Active vibration suppression techniques of a very

flexible robot manipulator

Mohd Ashraf Ahmad

Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering,
Universiti Malaysia Pahang,
Lebuhraya Tun Razak,
26300 Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia
E-mail: mashraf@ump.edu.my

Abstract: This paper presents the use of angular position control approaches
for a flexible robot manipulator with disturbances effect in the dynamic system.
Delayed Feedback Signal and Proportional-Derivative (PD)-type fuzzy logic
controller are the techniques used in this investigation to actively control the
vibrations of flexible structure. A complete analysis of simulation results for
each technique is presented in time domain and frequency domain respectively.
Performances of both controllers are examined in terms of vibration
suppression, disturbances cancellation, time response specifications and input
energy. Finally, a comparative assessment of the impact of each controller
on the system performance is discussed.

Keywords: flexible manipulator; vibration control; DFS; delayed feedback

signal; PD-type fuzzy logic controller.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Ahmad, M.A. (2009)

‘Active vibration suppression techniques of a very flexible robot manipulator’,
Int. J. Mechatronics and Manufacturing Systems, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp.311–330.

Biographical notes: Mohd Ashraf Ahmad obtained his Bachelor of

Electrical-Mechatronic Engineering with Honours (BEng) from the Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, in 2006. He received his Master Degree in
Modelling and Control of Flexible Robot Manipulator from the Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia, Johor, in 2008. He is currently lecturer in Faculty of
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Pahang (UMP).
His research interest are in the area of modelling and control of flexible robot
manipulator, vibration control techniques, command shaping control, modelling
and control of gantry crane, robotics and automation. He is a member of IEEE,
IAENG and Asia Control Association (ACA).

1 Introduction

Flexible robot manipulators exhibit many advantages over the rigid link manipulators,
as they require less material, are lighter in weight, have higher manipulation speed, lower
power consumption, require smaller actuators, are more manoeuvrable and transportable,
have less overall cost and higher payload to robot weight ratio (Martins et al., 2003).
However, the control of flexible manipulators to maintain accurate positioning is a
challenging problem. A flexible manipulator is a distributed parameter system and has

Copyright © 2009 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

312 M.A. Ahmad

infinitely many degrees of freedom. Moreover, the dynamics are highly non-linear
and complex. Problems arise owing to precise positioning requirements, system
flexibility leading to vibration, the difficulty in obtaining accurate model of the system
and non-minimum phase characteristics of the system (Yurkovich, 1992). To attain
end-point positional accuracy, a control mechanism that accounts for both the rigid body
and flexural motions of the system is required. If the advantages associated with lightness
are not to be sacrificed, precise models and efficient control strategies for flexible
manipulators have to be developed.
Research on the control methods that will eliminate vibration from wide range of
physical systems has found a great deal of interest for many years. The methods used to
solve the problems arising owing to unwanted structural vibrations include passive and
active control. The passive control method consists of mounting passive material on the
structure to change its dynamic characteristics such as stiffness and damping coefficient.
This method is efficient at high frequencies but expensive and bulky at low frequencies
(Hossain and Tokhi, 1997). Passive vibration control usually leads to an increase in the
overall weight of structure, which makes it less transportable especially for space
applications. Active vibration control consists of artificially generating sources that
absorb the energy caused by the unwanted vibrations to cancel or reduce their effect on
the overall system. Lueg in 1930 (Lueg, 1936) is among the first who used active
vibration control to cancel noise vibration. Since then, a large number of researchers have
concentrated on developing methodologies for the design and implementation of active
vibration control systems in various applications.
The requirement of precise position control of flexible manipulators implies that
residual vibration of the system should be zero or near zero. Over the years,
investigations have been carried out to devise efficient approaches to reduce the vibration
of flexible manipulators. The considered vibration control schemes can be divided into
two main categories: feed-forward control and feedback control techniques. Feed-forward
techniques for vibration suppression involve developing the control input through
consideration of the physical and vibrational properties of the system, so that system
vibrations at dominant response modes are reduced. This method does not require
additional sensors or actuators and does not account for changes in the system once the
input is developed. On the other hand, feedback control techniques use measurement and
estimations of the system states to reduce vibration. Feedback controllers can be designed
to be robust to parameter uncertainty. For flexible manipulators, feed-forward and
feedback control techniques are used for vibration suppression and end-point position
control, respectively. An acceptable system performance without vibration that accounts
for system changes can be achieved by developing a hybrid controller consisting of both
control techniques. Thus, with a properly designed feed-forward controller, the
complexity of the required feedback controller can be reduced.
A number of techniques have been proposed as feed-forward control strategies for
control of vibration. These include utilisation of Fourier expansion as the forcing function
to reduce peaks of the frequency spectrum at discrete points (Aspinwall, 1980),
derivation of a shaped torque that minimises vibration and the effect of parameter
variations (Swigert, 1980), development of computed torque based on a dynamic
model of the system (Moulin and Bayo, 1991), utilisation of single and multiple-switch
bang–bang control functions (Onsay and Akay, 1991) and construction of input functions
from ramped sinusoids or versine functions (Meckl and Seering, 1990). Moreover,
feed-forward control schemes with command shaping techniques have also been
 Active vibration suppression techniques 313

investigated in reducing the system vibration. These include filtering techniques

based on low-pass, band-stop and notch filters (Singhose et al., 1995; Tokhi and
Poerwanto, 1996; Pao, 2000; Tokhi and Azad, 1996) and input shaping (Singer and
Seering, 1990; Mohamed and Tokhi, 2002). In filtering techniques, a filtered torque input
is developed on the basis of extracting the input energy around the natural frequencies
of the system. Previous experimental studies on a single-link flexible manipulator have
shown that higher level of vibration reduction and robustness can be achieved with input
shaping technique than with filtering techniques. However, the major drawback of the
feed-forward control schemes is their limitation in coping with parameter changes and
disturbances to the system (Khorrami et al., 1994). Moreover, this technique requires
relatively precise knowledge of the dynamics of the system.
On the other hand, feedback control techniques use measurements and estimates of
the system states and change the actuator input accordingly for control of rigid body
motion and vibration suppression of the system. Feedback controllers can be designed to
be robust to parameter uncertainty. In general, control of flexible manipulators can be
made easier by locating every sensor exactly at the location of the actuator, as collocation
of sensors and actuators guarantees stable servo control (Gevarter, 1970). In the case of
flexible manipulator systems, the end-point position can be controlled using the
measurement obtained from the hub and end-point of the manipulator. The measurement
is then used as a basis for applying control torque at the hub. Thus, feedback control
strategies can be divided into collocated and non-collocated control techniques. Sensors
that can be utilised are strain gauge and accelerometer.
Several approaches utilising closed-loop control strategies have been reported for
control of flexible manipulators. These include linear state feedback control (Cannon and
Schmitz, 1984), adaptive control (Hasting and Book, 1990), robust control techniques
based on H-infinity (Feliu et al., 1987), variable structure control (Moser, 1993) and
intelligent control based on neural networks (Gutierrez et al., 1998) and fuzzy logic
control schemes (Moudgal et al., 1994).
Another method of controlling flexible structures is based on Time Delay Control
(TDC). In the TDC method, time delay is used to estimate the effects of unknown
dynamics and unpredictable disturbances (Youcef and Ito, 1990; Youcef and Bobbett,
1992; Richard, 1998). The TDC introduces delay terms in the closed loop of the system
to cancel the unwanted dynamics. In Youcef and Wu (1992), time delay has been used to
achieve an input/output linearisation of a class of non-linear systems with a special
application to the position control of a single-link flexible arm. In general, time delays
occur in real systems in several forms. Transport delays and acoustic feedback are
considered to be the main sources. The stability of systems with delay has been dealt with
extensively in the literature (Youcef and Reddy, 1990; Malek-Zavarei and Jamshidi,
1987; Kharitonov, 1979). Recently, a generalised approach to investigate the stability of
time delay systems has been presented in Olgac and Sipahi (2001). This approach
resembles the Routh–Hurwitz technique for linear systems and can be used to select the
time delay parameters that lead to a stable closed-loop system. More recently, TDC has
been used in the control of aerodynamic systems. In Ramesh and Narayanan (2001),
a time-delayed feedback to control the chaotic motions in a two-dimensional airfoil was
used, and a similar technique to stabilise the motion of helicopter rotor blades was used in
Krodkiewski and Faragher (2000) except that the time delay in this case was selected to
be the period of the motion to be stabilised. A method for determining the stability
switches for time-delayed dynamic systems with unknown parameters has been presented
314 M.A. Ahmad

in Wang and Hu (2000) and Jnifene (2007). In this paper, the time delay has been
introduced to generate the control signal, and the delay time is considered as the design
parameter.
This paper presents investigations of angular position control approach to eliminate
the effect of disturbances applied to the single-link flexible robot manipulator.
A simulation environment is developed within Simulink and Matlab for evaluation
of the control strategies. In this work, the dynamic model of the flexible manipulator is
derived using the AMM. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control
strategy, the disturbances effect is applied at the tip of the flexible link. This is then
extended to develop a feedback control strategy for vibration reduction and disturbances
rejection. Two feedback control strategies, which are DFS and PD-type FLCs, are
developed in this simulation work. Performances of each controller are examined in
terms of vibration suppression, disturbances rejection, hub angle response specifications
and input energy. Finally, a comparative assessment of the impact of each controller on
the system performance is presented and discussed.

2 The flexible manipulator system

The single-link flexible manipulator system considered in this work is shown in

Figure 1, where XoOYo and XOY represent the stationary and moving coordinates
frames, respectively, and τ represents the applied torque at the hub. E, I, ρ, A, Ih and mp
represent the Young modulus, area moment of inertia, mass density per unit volume,
cross-sectional area, hub inertia and payload mass of the manipulator, respectively.
In this work, the motion of the manipulator is confined to the XoOYo plane. Transverse
shear and rotary inertia effects are neglected, since the manipulator is long and slender.
Thus, the Bernoulli–Euler beam theory is allowed to be used to model the elastic
behaviour of the manipulator. The manipulator is assumed to be stiff in vertical
bending and torsion, allowing it to vibrate dominantly in the horizontal direction, and
thus the gravity effects are neglected. Moreover, the manipulator is considered to have a
constant cross-section and uniform material properties throughout. In this study,
an aluminium-type flexible manipulator of dimensions 900 × 19.008 × 3.2004 mm3,
E = 71 × 109 N/m2, I = 5.1924 × 1011 m4, ρ = 2710 kg/m3 and Ih = 5.8598 × 10–4 kgm2 is
considered.

Figure 1 Description of the flexible manipulator system

 Active vibration suppression techniques 315

3 Modelling of the flexible manipulator

This section provides a brief description on the modelling of flexible robot manipulator
system, as a basis of a simulation environment for the development and assessment of
control techniques. The AMM with two modal displacements is considered in
characterising the dynamic behaviour of the manipulator incorporating structural
damping and hub inertia. Further details of the description and derivation of the dynamic
model of the system can be found in Subudhi and Morris (2002). The dynamic model
is validated with an actual experimental rig to study the performance of the model in
Martins et al. (2003).
Considering revolute joints and motion of the manipulator on a two-dimensional
plane, the position vector that describes an arbitrary point along the deflected link with
respect to its local inertial coordinate frame {O0, X0, Y0, Z0} is given by
r ( x, t ) = [ x cos θ (t ) − v( x, t ) sin θ (t )] p1 + [ x sin θ (t ) + v( x, t ) cos θ (t )] p2 (1)

where p1 and p2 are the unit vectors along the X0 and Y0 axes, respectively. To simplify
the notation, Cθ and Sθ represent cosθ and sinθ, respectively. The velocity vector of the
same infinitesimal element is accordingly given by

r ( x, t ) = [−( xθ + v) Sθ − vθ Cθ ] p1 + [( xθ + v)Cθ − vθ Sθ ] p2 (2)

where the superposed dot has the usual meaning of time derivative. The kinetic energy of
the system can thus be formulated as
1 1 L
T = I H θ 2 + ρ ∫ r ( x, t )T r ( x, t ) dx
2 2 0 (3)
1 1 L
T = I H θ 2 + ρ ∫ ( x 2θ 2 + v 2 + 2vxθ + v 2θ 2 ) dx.
2 2 0

A common simplification is usually made at this point. This simplification is motivated

by the simplicity desired from the models used for control purposes and has the
underlying assumption that the displacement ν(x, t) is small. The comparative values are
the first natural frequency for the rotational velocity and the length of the beam for
transverse displacement. Rearranging the terms in the expression for the kinetic energy
that multiply θ 2 (t ) yields

1 1 L
T = I H θ 2 + ρ ∫ (( x 2 + v 2 )θ 2 + v 2 + 2vxθ ) dx
2 2 0 (4)
1 1 L 1 L
= I H θ 2 + ρ ∫ ( x 2 + v 2 )θ 2 dx + ρ ∫ (v 2 + 2vxθ ) dx.
2 2 0 2 0
Under the stated assumption, the second term on the right-hand side of the above
equation can be simplified as
L L L
ρ ∫ ( x 2 + v 2 )θ 2 dx ≈ ∫ ρ ( x 2 )θ 2 dx = θ 2 ∫ ρ ( x 2 ) dx = θ 2 I b (5)
0 0 0

where Ib is the beam rotation inertia about the origin O0 as if it was rigid. This
simplification is of common practice for control applications, and as is shown further,
316 M.A. Ahmad

results in much simpler (linear) equations of motion for the system. The simplified form
of the kinetic energy is finally obtained as
1 1 L
T = ( I H + I b )θ 2 + ρ ∫ (v 2 + 2vxθ ) dx. (6)
2 2 0
The potential energy of the beam can be formulated as
2
1 L  ∂2v 
U = ∫ EI  2  dx. (7)
2 0  ∂x 
This expression states the internal energy owing to the elastic deformation of the link
as it bends. The potential energy owing to gravity is not accounted for because only
motion in the plane perpendicular to the gravitational field is considered.
Next, to obtain a closed-form dynamic model of the manipulator, the energy
expressions in equations (6) and (7) are used to formulate the Lagrangian L = T − U.
Assembling the mass and stiffness matrices and utilising the Euler–Lagrange equation of
motion, the dynamic equation of motion of the flexible manipulator system can be
obtained as
Mq + Dq + Kq = F (8)

where M, D and K are global mass, damping and stiffness matrices of the manipulator,
respectively. The damping matrix is obtained by assuming that the manipulator exhibits
the characteristic of Rayleigh damping. F is a vector of external forces and q is a modal
displacement vector given as
T
q = [θ q1 q2 … qn ] = θ qT 
T
(9)

F = [τ 0 0 0] .
T
(10)

Here, qn is the modal amplitude of the ith clamped-free mode considered in the AMM
procedure and n represents the total number of assumed modes. The model of the
uncontrolled system can be represented in a state-space form as
x = Ax + Bu
(11)
y = Cx
T
with the vector x = θ θ q1 q2 q1 q2  and the matrices A and B are given by

 03 × 3 I3 × 3   03 × 1 
A= −1 −1  , B =  −1  ,
 − M K − M D   M  (12)
C =  I1 × 3 01 × 3  , D = [ 0] .

4 Controller design

In this section, two feedback control strategies (DFS and PD-type FLC) are proposed and
described in detail. The main objective of the feedback controller in this study is to
 Active vibration suppression techniques 317

maintain the angular position of flexible manipulator at the same time as suppressing the
vibration owing to disturbances effect. All the feedback control strategies are
incorporated in the closed-loop system to eliminate the effect of disturbances.

4.1 Delayed Feedback Signal controller

In this section, the control signal is calculated based on the delayed position feedback
approach described in equation (13) and illustrated by the block diagram shown in
Figure 2.
u (t ) = k ( y (t ) − y (t − τ )). (13)

Substituting equation (13) into equation (11) and taking the Laplace transform gives
sIx( s ) = Ax( s ) − kBC (1 − e − sτ ) x( s). (14)

Figure 2 The Delayed Feedback Signal controller structure

The stability of the system given in equation (14) depends on the roots of the
characteristic equation
∆( s,τ ) = | sI − A + kBC (1 − e − sτ ) | = 0. (15)

Equation (15) is transcendental and results in an infinite number of characteristic roots

(Olgac and Sipahi, 2001). Several approaches dealing with solving retarded differential
equations have been widely explored. In this study, the approach described in Ramesh
and Narayanan (2001) will be used in determining the critical values of the time delay τ
that result in characteristic roots of crossing the imaginary axes. This approach suggests
that equation (15) can be written in the form
∆( s,τ ) = P( s ) + Q( s )e − sτ . (16)

P(s) and Q(s) are polynomials in s with real coefficients and deg(P(s)) = n > deg(Q(s))
where n is the order of the system. To find the critical time delay τ that leads to marginal
stability, the characteristic equation is evaluated at s = jω. Separating the polynomials
P(s) and Q(s) into real and imaginary parts and replacing e–jωτ by cos(ωτ) − jsin(ωτ),
equation (16) can be written as
∆( jω ,τ ) = PR (ω ) + jPI (ω ) + (QR (ω ) + jQI (ω ))(cos(ωτ ) − j sin(ωτ )). (17)
318 M.A. Ahmad

The characteristic equation ∆(s,τ) = 0 has roots on the imaginary axis for some values of
τ ≥ 0 if equation (17) has positive real roots. A solution of ∆( jω, τ) = 0 exists if the
magnitude | ∆(jω,τ) | = 0. Taking the square of the magnitude of ∆( jω, τ) and setting it to
zero will lead to the following equation
PR2 + PI2 − (QR2 + QI2 ) = 0. (18)

By setting the real and imaginary parts of equation (18) to zero, the equation is
rearranged as follows
QR QI   cos β   − PR 
Q = , (19)
 I −QR   sin β   − PI 

where β = ωτ.
Solving for sin β and cos β gives
(− PR QI + PI QR ) (− PR QR − PI QI )
sin( β ) = and cos( β ) = .
(QR2 + QI2 ) (QR2 + QI2 )

The critical values of time delay can be determined as follows: if a positive root of
equation (18) exists, the corresponding time delay τ can be found by
β 2k π
τk = + (20)
ω ω
where β ∈ [0 2π]. At these time delays, the root loci of the closed-loop system are
crossing the imaginary axis of the s-plane. This crossing can be from stable to unstable or
from unstable to stable. To investigate the above method further, the time-delayed
feedback controller is applied to the single-link flexible manipulator. Practically, the
control signal for the DFS controller requires only one position sensor and uses only the
current position and the position with τ second delay in past. There are only two control
parameters: k and τ that need to be set. Using the stability analysis described in Ramesh
and Narayanan (2001), the gain and time-delayed of the system is set at k = 55 and
τ = 0.005. The control signal of DFS controller can be written as follows:
uDFS (t ) = −55(θ (t ) − θ (t − 0.005)).

4.2 PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller

Fuzzy control can be viewed as a way of converting expert knowledge into an automatic
control strategy without a detailed knowledge of the plant (Zadeh, 1973; Mamdani, 1974;
Mamdani and Assilian, 1975). The input is first fuzzified and then processed by the fuzzy
inference engine using heuristic decision rules. FLC uses rules in the form of
“IF [condition] THEN [action]” to linguistically describe the input/output relationship.
The membership functions convert linguistic terms into precise numeric values.
The output of the fuzzy controller is obtained by a defuzzification process that converts
the fuzzy quantities representing the control signal into a signal that can be used as the
control input to the plant.
A PD-type FLC utilising hub angle and hub velocity feedback is developed to control
the rigid body motion of the system (Siddique and Tokhi, 1999; Siddique, 2002).
 Active vibration suppression techniques 319

The hybrid fuzzy control system proposed in this work is shown in Figure 3, where θ and
θ are the hub angle and hub velocity of the flexible robot manipulator, respectively,
whereas k1, k2 and k3 are scaling factors for two inputs and one output of the FLC used
with the normalised universe of discourse for the fuzzy membership functions.

Figure 3 The PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller structure

In this paper, the hub velocity is measured from the system instead of deriving it with
the equation above. Triangular membership functions are chosen for inputs and output.
The membership functions for hub angle, hub velocity, and torque input are shown in
Figure 4. Normalised universes of discourse are used for both hub angle and velocity and
output torque. Scaling factors k1 and k2 are chosen in such a way as to convert the
two inputs within the universe of discourse and activate the rule base effectively,
whereas k3 is selected such that it activates the system to generate the desired output.
Initially, all these scaling factors are chosen based on trial and error. To construct a rule
base, the hub angle, hub velocity, and torque input are partitioned into five primary fuzzy
sets as follows (Siddique and Tokhi, 1999; Siddique, 2002):
Hub angle A = {NM NS ZE PS PM},
Hub velocity V = {NM NS ZE PS PM},
Torque U = {NM NS ZE PS PM},
where A, V, and U are the universes of discourse for hub angle, hub velocity and torque
input, respectively. The nth rule of the rule base for the FLC, with angle and angular
velocity as inputs, is given by

Rn: IF(θ is Ai) AND ( θ is Vj) THEN (u is Uk),

where Rn, n = 1, 2, …, Nmax, is the nth fuzzy rule, Ai, Vj, and Uk, for i, j, k = 1, 2, …, 5,
are the primary fuzzy sets.
A PD-type FLC was designed with 11 rules as a closed-loop component of the control
strategy for maintaining the angular position of flexible manipulator at the same time
as suppressing the vibration owing to disturbances effect. The rule base was extracted
based on underdamped system response and is shown in Table 1. The control surface is
shown in Figure 5. The three scaling factors, k1, k2 and k3, were chosen heuristically to
achieve a satisfactory set of time-domain parameters. These values were recorded as
k1 = 1.02, k2 = 0.30 and k3 = 1.0.
320 M.A. Ahmad

Figure 4 Membership functions of a Fuzzy Logic Controller: (a) hub angle; (b) hub velocity
and (c) torque

(a) (b)

(c)

Table 1 Linguistic rules of Fuzzy Logic Controller

Rules
If (Hub angle is NM) and (Hub velocity is ZE) then (Torque is PM)
If (Hub angle is NS) and (Hub velocity is ZE) then (Torque is PS)
If (Hub angle is NS) and (Hub velocity is PS) then (Torque is ZE)
If (Hub angle is ZE) and (Hub velocity is NM) then (Torque is PM)
If (Hub angle is ZE) and (Hub velocity is NS) then (Torque is PS)
If (Hub angle is ZE) and (Hub velocity is ZE) then (Torque is ZE)
If (Hub angle is ZE) and (Hub velocity is PS) then (Torque is NS)
If (Hub angle is ZE) and (Hub velocity is PM) then (Torque is NM)
If (Hub angle is PS) and (Hub velocity is NS) then (Torque is ZE)
If (Hub angle is PS) and (Hub velocity is ZE) then (Torque is NS)
If (Hub angle is PM) and (Hub velocity is ZE) then (Torque is NM)
 Active vibration suppression techniques 321

Figure 5 Control surface of the Fuzzy Logic Controller

5 Simulation results

In this section, the proposed control schemes are implemented and tested within the
simulation environment of the flexible manipulator and the corresponding results are
presented. The control strategies were designed by undertaking a computer simulation
using the fourth-order Runge–Kutta integration method at a sampling frequency of
1 kHz. Three system responses namely the hub angle, hub velocity and modal
displacement are obtained. Moreover, the Power Spectral Density (PSD) of the modal
displacement is evaluated to investigate the dynamic behaviour of the system in
frequency domain. Four criteria are used to evaluate the performances of the control
strategies:
• Level of vibration reduction at the natural frequencies. This is accomplished by
comparing the responses of the controller with the response to the open-loop system.
• Disturbance cancellation. The capability of the controller to achieve steady-state
conditions at zero angular position.
• The hub angle response specifications. Parameters that are evaluated are settling time
and magnitude of oscillation of the angular position response. The settling time is
calculated on the basis of ±0.02% of the steady-state value.
• Input energy. The magnitude and frequency of oscillation of input torque to the
flexible manipulator are observed.
In all simulations, the initial condition x0 = [0 0 1 × 10–3 0 1 × 10–5 0]T was used. This
initial condition is considered as the disturbances applied to the flexible manipulator
system. The first two modes of vibration of the system are considered, as these dominate
the dynamic of the system.
Figure 6 shows the open-loop response of the free end of the flexible arm, which
consists of hub angle, hub velocity, modal displacement and PSD results. These results
were considered as the system response with disturbances effect and will be used to
322 M.A. Ahmad

evaluate the performance of feedback control strategies. It is noted that, in open-loop

configuration, the steady-state hub angle for the flexible manipulator system was
achieved at 0.014 rad within the settling times of 1 s. The hub velocity response shows
the maximum oscillation between −4 rad/s and 6 rad/s, whereas the modal displacement
oscillates between ±0.03 m. Resonance frequencies of the system were obtained by
transforming the time-domain representation of the system responses into frequency
domain using power spectral analysis. The vibration frequencies of the flexible
manipulator system under disturbances effect were obtained as 16 and 55 Hz for the first
two modes as demonstrated in Figure 6.

Figure 6 Open-loop response of the flexible manipulator: (a) hub angle; (b) hub velocity;
(c) modal displacement and (d) PSD of modal displacement

(a) (b)

(c) (d)

The system responses of the flexible manipulator with the DFS controller are shown in
Figure 7. It shows that, with the gain and time delay of 55 and 0.005 s, respectively,
the effect of the disturbances has been successfully eliminated. This is evidenced in hub
angle response, whereas the flexible manipulator system maintained its steady-state
conditions at zero radian in a very fast response. It is noted that the vibrations in the hub
angle, hub velocity and modal displacement responses were reduced when compared with
 Active vibration suppression techniques 323

the open-loop response. This can be clearly demonstrated in frequency domain results as
the magnitudes of the PSD at the natural frequencies were significantly reduced. Table 2
summarises the levels of vibration reduction of the system response at the first two modes
in comparison with the open-loop system. Besides, the corresponding settling time and
oscillation of the hub angle response and input energy of the torque in the case of DFS
controller are also depicted in Table 2. The results demonstrated that the DFS controller
exhibits high oscillation magnitude of input torque to compensate the angular position to
steady-state conditions.

Figure 7 Response of the flexible manipulator with DFS controller: (a) hub angle;
(b) hub velocity; (c) modal displacement; (d) PSD of modal displacement
and (e) input torque

(a)

(b)
324 M.A. Ahmad

Figure 7 Response of the flexible manipulator with DFS controller: (a) hub angle;
(b) hub velocity; (c) modal displacement; (d) PSD of modal displacement
and (e) input torque (continued)

(c)

(d)

(e)
 Active vibration suppression techniques 325

Table 2 Level of vibration reduction of the modal displacement, specifications of hub angle
response and oscillation of input torque using DFS and PD-type Fuzzy Logic
Controller

Attenuation (dB)
of vibration modal Specifications of hub angle
displacement response
Maximum Maximum torque
Controller Mode 1 Mode 2 Settling time (s) oscillation (rad) oscillation (Nm)
DFS 123.36 66.94 0.505 –0.011 to 0.022 –1.921 to 1.706
PD-type Fuzzy 102.24 23.19 0.427 –0.008 to 0.014 –0.839 to 0.513

Figure 8 shows the response of the closed-loop system using the PD-type FLC.
The angular position result demonstrates that the PD-type FLC can also handle the
effect of disturbances in the system and achieve zero radian steady-state conditions
as similar to the case DFS controller. It is noted that the overall system vibrations
were significantly reduced with the PD-type FLC even though the level of vibration
reduction was less than the case with the DFS controller. Besides, the overall time
response results exhibit small magnitude of oscillation when compared with the
DFS controller. The levels of vibration reduction with the modal displacement at the first
two modes of vibration in comparison with the open-loop system and the hub angle
response specification are summarised in Table 2. The PSD result shows that
the magnitudes of vibration were significantly reduced especially for the first mode
of vibration as demonstrated in Figure 8. In terms of input energy performances,
the PD-type FLC requires a small input torque when compared with the case of the DFS
controller.

Figure 8 Response of the flexible manipulator with PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller:
(a) hub angle; (b) hub velocity; (c) modal displacement; (d) PSD of modal displacement
and (e) input torque

(a)
326 M.A. Ahmad

Figure 8 Response of the flexible manipulator with PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller:
(a) hub angle; (b) hub velocity; (c) modal displacement; (d) PSD of modal displacement
and (e) input torque (continued)

(b)

(c)

(d)
 Active vibration suppression techniques 327

Figure 8 Response of the flexible manipulator with PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller:
(a) hub angle; (b) hub velocity; (c) modal displacement; (d) PSD of modal displacement
and (e) input torque (continued)

(e)

6 Comparative assessment

By comparing the results presented in Table 2, it is noted that higher performance in the
reduction of vibration of the system is achieved with the DFS control strategies. This is
observed and compared with the PD-type FLC at the first two modes of vibration.
For comparative assessment, the levels of vibration reduction with the modal
displacement using DFS and PD-type FLC are shown with the bar graphs in Figure 9.
The result shows that higher level of vibration reduction is achieved with the DFS
controller when compared with the PD-type FLC for both modes of vibration. Therefore,
it can be concluded that overall DFS provides better performance in vibration reduction
when compared with both PD-type FLCs.

Figure 9 Level of vibration reduction using DFS and PD-type Fuzzy Logic Controller
328 M.A. Ahmad

Comparisons of the specifications of the hub angle responses using DFS and PD-type
FLC are summarised in Table 1 for the settling time and magnitude of oscillation of hub
angle. It is noted that the settling time of the hub angle response using the PD-type FLC
is faster than the DFS controller. The result reveals that the PD-type FLC provides a
high-speed system response to cater the disturbances effect to the flexible manipulator
system. For the oscillation of hub angle specifications, the magnitude of hub angle tends
to oscillate higher with the DFS controller when compared with the case of PD-type FLC.
Therefore, it can be concluded that the PD-type FLC provides less magnitude of
oscillation of hub angle with a faster-response capability when compared with the DFS
controller.
The performance of the control strategies can also be focused on the input torque to
the flexible manipulator system. The results from Figures 7(e) and 8(e) show that the
input torque for DFS and PD-type FLC are very similar in terms of frequency of
oscillation except for the magnitude of oscillation torque. It is noted that both DFS and
PD-type FLC exhibit high-frequency oscillations of input torque, and as a consequence,
both controllers will require an actuator with higher bandwidth to cater wide range
of oscillation. By comparing the results presented in Table 1, it is noted that the
magnitude of oscillation torque using the DFS control strategies is almost two-fold
higher than the case of PD-type FLC. The results reveal that the PD-type FLC can
achieve the same performance as the DFS controller in terms of disturbances rejection
and zero radian steady-state conditions by exhibiting low input energy to the flexible
manipulator system.

7 Conclusion

Investigations into vibration suppression of a flexible robot manipulator with

disturbances effect using the DFS and PD-type FLC have been presented. Performances
of the controller are examined in terms of vibration suppression, disturbances
cancellation, hub angle response specifications and input energy. The results
demonstrated that the effect of the disturbances in the system can successfully be handled
by both DFS and PD-type FLC. A significant reduction in the system vibration has been
achieved with the DFS controller when compared with the PD-type FLC. By using the
PD-type FLC, the speed of the response is slightly faster at the expense of small
magnitude of oscillation in hub angle response specifications. The results show that the
PD-type FLC provides a small input energy to the flexible manipulator system when
compared with the DFS control strategies.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by Faculty of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti
Malaysia Pahang, especially Control & Instrumentation (COINS) Research Group.
 Active vibration suppression techniques 329

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