Model-based and model-free control of flexible-link robots: A comparison between representative methods

The paper presents a comparative study on representative methods for model-based and model-free control of flexible-link robots. Model-based techniques for the control of flexible-link robots can come up against limitations when an accurate model is unavailable, due to parameters uncertainty or truncation of high order vibration modes. On the other hand, several research papers argue that suitable model-free control methods result in satisfactory performance of flexible-link robots. In this paper two model-free approaches of flexible-link robot control are examined: (i) energy-based control, and (ii) neural adaptive control. The performance of the aforementioned methods is compared to the inverse dynamics model-based control, in a simulation case study for planar 2-DOF manipulators.