Design and experimental validation of piecewise-linear state observers for flexible link mechanisms

The design of an observer estimating the state variables of a plant is an essential step towards the synthesis of high-performance model-based control schemes. In this paper, the problem of designing accurate state observers for flexible link mechanisms is tackled. The complexity of such a problem is considerable due to the nonlinear characteristics of flexible link mechanism dynamic models. Since nonlinear state observers have limited practical utility, in this work an investigation is made on the possibility of employing the Kalman filter theory together with suitable piecewise-linear truncated dynamic models. A general approach is developed and experimental results are given for the case of a four bar linkage with flexible links. Not only do these results confirm the theoretical and numerical results, but they also prove the practical effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.