Control of an industrial robot using acceleration feedback

A controller using acceleration feedback has been applied to a flexible robot for which the position and velocity of the load are not measured. It is shown that acceleration feedback allows an exact tracking of the motor position, irrespective of the non-linear flexibilities of the axes and of the measurement disturbances. This easy-to-tune algorithm whose main control parameters are the modal masses of the motor and load part, and only consists of a positive acceleration feedback plus a PD controller, has been validated on an industrial robot with orthogonal axes.