Kalman filter and variants for estimation in 2DOF serial flexible link and joint using fractional order PID controller

Abstract

Robotic manipulators have been widely used in industries, mainly to move tools into different specific positions. Thus, it has become necessary to have accurate knowledge about the tool position using forward kinematics after accessing the angular locations of limbs. This paper presents a simulation study in which an encoder attached to the limbs gathers information about the angular positions. The measured angles are applied to the Kalman Filter (KF) and its variants for state estimation. This work focuses on the use of fractional order controllers with a Two Degree of Freedom Serial Flexible Links (2DSFL) and Two Degree of Freedom Serial Flexible Joint (2DSFJ) and undertakes simulations with noise and a square wave as input. The fractional order controllers fit better with the system properties than integer order controllers. The KF and its variants use an unknown and assumed process and measurement noise matrices to predict the actual data. An optimisation problem is proposed to achieve reasonable estimations with the updated covariance matrices.