Decentralized vibration control for fast and precise light weight robots

A substantial increase in the robot velocity can only be achieved by introducing light-weight composite materials for the mechanics and gearless motor drives in order to substantially reduce the joint inertia. However, a light-weight robot carcass results in structural oscillations which have now to be removed by the additional introduction of advanced model-based control structures and concepts. For solving this problem in this paper a new mechatronics concept will be presented in which structural end-point oscillations are damped by means of a decentrally controlled vibration absorber.