Position Control of Single Link Flexible Manipulator: A Functional Observer Based Sliding Mode Approach

This paper proposes a functional observer-based sliding mode control technique for position control of a single-link flexible manipulator. The proposed method considers the unmodelled system dynamics as uncertainty and aims to achieve accurate position control. The functional observer is used to directly estimate the sliding mode control design components and a sliding mode controller to generate the control signal, which guarantees the system’s robustness and stability. The proposed control scheme is validated using numerical simulations.