Friction compensation techniques are studied for control of a flexible-link robot based on the LuGre friction model. To overcome the problem of uncertain parameters in the friction model, adaptive control schemes are used for two different types of parametric uncertainties. A novel dual-observer technique is proposed to estimate the internal state inside the friction model. A distributed-parameter dynamic model is used for the flexible arm to design the controllers. The Lyapunov stability theorem is used to guarantee the global asymptotic stability of the controllers. The performance of position tracking and link vibration attenuation is verified through experimental results. The results also confirm the effectiveness of the proposed friction compensation schemes.
