SUMMARY

Although, it is reasonable to assume rigid dynamics when the components of the robot arm are very stiff. In the real world however, there is no such thing. Flexibility is the major issue why robot arms are slow and heavy, since vibrations are hard to measure and control. This work presents a novel method for modelling serial manipulators in 3D space. An Extended Kalman Filter is used to observe the flexible states using accelerometer and strain signals. The arm is controlled both open-loop and closed loop control techniques. The theory is validated by experiments.