Journal of Intelligent and Robotic Systems 37: 273–284, 2003.

273
© 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

A New Approach to Parametric Identification of a

Single-Link Flexible-Joint Manipulator

JENG TZE HUANG

Department of Electronic Engineering, Van Nung Institute of Technology, Chungli, 340, Taiwan;
e-mail: jthuang@cc.vit.edu.tw

(Received: 21 November 2001; in final form: 14 March 2003)

Abstract. A new parametric observer for identifying the system parameters of a single-link flexible-
joint manipulator is presented. The design achieves the desired goals provided two conditions are
satisfied, i.e., the basis functions are linearly independent in terms of the steady-state trajectories and
the parameter errors converge to some constants eventually. It can be incorporated with any a control
scheme sustaining such steady-state trajectories. No acceleration signals are required. However, the
motor inertia must be given a priori. Numerical study of the proposed scheme with a specific robust
control law is undertaken to demonstrate its validity.

Key words: flexible joint, parametric observer, linear independence.

1. Introduction
The growing demands for robot systems to perform tasks of high-accuracy track-
ing have attracted lots of attention to the effect of the joint flexibility recently.
Theoretical control methods aiming at tackling this issue are versatile [2]. These
include singular perturbation, feedback linearization [16], robust control [5, 18],
and adaptive control techniques [7]. Exact knowledge of the physical parameters
of the robots are prerequisite or at least beneficial to these sophisticated control
methodologies. In practice, these parameters are not known exactly and need to
be identified. In the case of a rigid robot, standard identification methods accom-
panying some optimal exciting trajectories are generally used [1, 12]. However,
implementation of these schemes are not easy in terms of both the seeking time
of those trajectories and the acceleration signals required [6, 14]. They are even
more difficult for flexible-joint robots due to the elastic degrees of freedom be-
ing uncontrollable [4, 14]. Therefore, more efficient identification schemes are in
demand.
Regarding this, a new method, based on the works in [8], is proposed for the
parametric identification of a single-link flexible-joint manipulator in this paper.
Given a priori the motor inertia, the proposed scheme identifies all the rest para-
meters asymptotically provided two criteria are fulfilled, i.e., the parameter errors
finally converge to some constants and the basis functions are linearly independent
274 J. T. HUANG

in terms of the steady-state trajectories. The control input is then selected to sustain
a steady-state motion in which the criterion is fulfilled. It is not hard to find such
a control algorithm in general. To demonstrate this, simulation of the proposed
scheme incorporating with a specific robust control method, which ensures the
practical stability of the tracking error dynamics, is presented [18]. The results
verified the effectiveness of the proposed design.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Preliminaries for the design
and the tackled issue are given in Section 2. The proposed identification design is
introduced in Section 3. Simulation of the proposed scheme incorporating with a
specific robust control is undertaken in Section 4 to demonstrate the validity of the
proposed design. Discussions are finally given in Section 5.

2. Preliminaries
To provide a concrete framework for the later identification design, let’s consider
first a little more general four-dimensional nonlinear system
ẋ1 = x2 ,
ẋ2 = θ T f (x),
(1)
ẋ3 = x4 ,
ẋ4 = α T φ(x) + β T ψ(x)u(t)
where x = [x1 x2 x3 x4 ]T ∈ R4 is the system state, θ ∈ Rl , α ∈ Rm , β ∈ Rs are the
system parameters, f (x) ∈ Rl , φ(x) ∈ Rm ∈ Rr , ψ(x) ∈ Rs are the corresponding
known basis functions, and u(t) ∈ R is the control input. The linear-in-control
parameter vector β is assumed to be known a priori while the other parameters
are left to be estimated. To that end, most existing identification schemes require
the acceleration signals and persistent excitation, both are unfortunately hard to
get [9, 12]. In contrast, a closed-loop parametric identification design, modified
from that in [8], is proposed in this section to achieve the objectives without re-
quiring the acceleration signals. Moreover, the proposed design guarantees the
asymptotic stability of the parameter equilibrium provided the basis functions are
linearly independent in terms of the steady-state system trajectories. It can then
be incorporated with any a control scheme ensuring the asymptotic tracking of
a reference trajectory, along which the criterion is fulfilled. However, due to the
unknown nonlinearity θ T f (x) being not in the span of the control input, such a
task is not easy at all. The backstepping procedures are required in general under
such circumstances [2, 11]. The major and immediate application of such a design
is to the single-link flexible-joint manipulator and will be discussed in detail in the
next section.
Before introducing the main results, the following assumptions are required.
(A1) The system states x(t) in (1) are measurable.
(A2) The basis functions f (x) and φ(x) are continuously differentiable in x and
are bounded for bounded x.
A NEW APPROACH TO PARAMETRIC IDENTIFICATION 275

(A3) A specific bounded control input u(x, t) is applied to result in bounded states
x(t) and a non-constant steady-state trajectory vector x̄(t), i.e., x(t) → x̄(t)
as t → ∞.
(A4) The component functions of f (x̄(t)) and those of φ(x̄(t)) are linearly inde-
pendent separately, i.e., the relations a T f (x̄(t)) = 0 and bT φ(x̄(t))
= 0, with a, b being some constant vectors, imply that a = 0 and b = 0,
respectively, [3].
The design starts from constructing the parametric observers for θ and α in (1),
whose outputs are [8]

x2 (t )
θ̂(t) = y(t) + c1 f (x1 , ξ, x3 , x4 ) dξ,

x4 (t )
0 (2)
α̂(t) = z(t) + c2 φ(x1 , x2 , x3 , ξ ) dξ,
0

where c1 , c2 > 0, θ̂(t) and α̂(t) are estimates for the actual parameter θ and α,
respectively, ξ is the integration variable, y(t) and z(t) are the corresponding in-
termediate state vectors at disposal, however, they should be delicately selected
to render the whole closed-loop system asymptotically stable. To that end, we let
them be updated in the following ways [8]
 
x2 (t ) 
 T  ∂
ẏ(t) = −c1 θ̂ f (x) f (x) − ẋi f (x1 , ξ, x3 , x4 ) dξ ,
i=1,3,4
∂xi 0

 
ż(t) = −c2 α̂ T φ(x) + β̂ T ψ(x)u(x, t) φ(x) (3)



3
∂ x4 (t )
− ẋj φ(x1 , x2 , x3 , ξ ) dξ .
j =1
∂xj 0

Sustained the assumptions (A1)–(A4), it can be shown that the parametric ob-
servers in (2), with the dynamics of the intermediate states defined in (3), will
eventually identify the parameters θ and α in (1). The proof is similar to that in [8],
for brevity, it is omitted here. Nevertheless, a detailed analysis of this design for
the single-link flexible-joint manipulator will be given in the next section.

x (t )
Remark. The cancelling term ẋ4 (∂/∂x4 ) 0 2 f (x1 , ξ, x3 , x4 ) dξ appearing
in (3) calls for the measurement of the signal ẋ4 in general. However, in the case of
a system with f (x) being independent of the variable x4 , the cancelling term be-
comes zero and hence such a measurement is avoided. Similarly, the measurement
of the signals ẋ2 is not required if φ(x) is independent of x2 . These are the main
reasons for avoiding the measurement of the acceleration signals in the subsequent
designs.
276 J. T. HUANG

3. Identification Designs
The proposed scheme above will be applied to a single-link flexible-joint ma-
nipulator in this section. Given a priori the motor inertia, it identifies the rest
system parameters without requiring acceleration signals. Details are given in the
following.
The dynamics of a single-link flexible-joint manipulator, in state-space repre-
sentation, can be described by [7]

ẋ1 = x2 , (4.1)
mgl ke
ẋ2 = − sin x1 − (x1 − x3 ), (4.2)
Jl Jl
ẋ3 = x4 , (4.3)
ke µ 1
ẋ4 = (x1 − x3 ) − x4 + u(t) (4.4)
Jr Jr Jr
where x1 is the link position, x2 is the link angular velocity, x3 is the motor rotor
position, x4 is the motor rotor angular velocity, Jl is the link inertia, Jr is the motor
rotor inertia, ke is the joint elastic constant, m is the link mass, l is the link length,
g is the gravity constant, µ is the viscosity, and u(t) is the control input. The
dynamics described in (4) belongs to the class of systems in (1) and hence the
parametric observer constructed there can be directly applied. First, to unify the
notations, we let θ1 = mgl/Jl , θ2 = ke /Jl , α1 = ke /Jr , α2 = µ/Jr , β1 = 1/Jr .
In the sequel, it is assumed a closed-loop control input u(t) = u(x, t) is applied to
sustain (A3).
By substituting f (x) = [−sin x1 , −(x1 − x3 )]T and φ(x) = [(x1 − x3 ), −x4 ]T
into (2) and carrying out the integration there explicitly, the resulting estimated
parameter vector θ̂ and α̂ will be

θ̂1 (t) = y1 (t) − c1 (sin x1 )x2 ,

θ̂2 (t) = y2 (t) − c1 (x1 − x3 )x2 ,
(5)
α̂1 (t) = z1 (t) + c2 (x1 − x3 )x4 ,
1
α̂2 (t) = z2 (t) − c2 x42
2
where the intermediate states yi (t) and zi (t), i = 1, 2, according to (3), should be
updated by

ẏ1 (t) = −c1 sin x1 (θ̂1 sin(x1 ) + θ̂2 (x1 − x3 )) − (cos x1 )x22 ,
ẏ2 (t) = −c1 (x1 − x3 )(θ̂1 sin(x1 ) + θ̂2 (x1 − x3 )) − (x2 − x4 )x2 ,
ż1 (t) = −c2 (x1 − x3 )(α̂1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̂2 x4 + β1 u(x, t)) (6)
+ (x2 − x4 )x4 ,
ż2 (t) = c2 x4 (α̂1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̂2 x4 + β1 u(x, t)).
A NEW APPROACH TO PARAMETRIC IDENTIFICATION 277

It is noted that no measurement of the acceleration signals ẋ2 , ẋ4 are required to
implement the update laws (6), as explained earlier. Next, by directly differenti-
ating Equation (5) with time and taking Equation (6) into account, the resulting
parameter error dynamics can be easily obtained as

θ̃˙ 1 (t) = −c1 sin x1 (θ̃1 sin(x1 ) + θ̃2 (x1 − x3 )),

θ̃˙ 2 (t) = −c1 (x1 − x3 )(θ̃1 sin(x1 ) + θ̃2 (x1 − x3 )),
(7)
α̃˙ 1 (t) = −c2 (x1 − x3 )(α̃1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̃2 x4 ),
α̃˙ 2 (t) = c2 x4 (α̃1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̃2 x4 ).
The resulting error dynamics in (7) is apparently in a standard form arising fre-
quently in many adaptive identification schemes. Hence, the persistent excitation
of the corresponding basis functions is totally responsible for the asymptotic sta-
bility of the parametric equilibrium [13]. Moreover, in the presence of bounded
disturbances, the level of persistent excitation also enhances the robustness in the
sense that the ultimate estimation errors are ensured to converge to a residual set
with the size of the same order of the disturbances [9]. However, it is difficult to
find a control to sustain persistent excitation especially for a nonminimum-phase
system as in (4). Nevertheless, a less stringent condition, but practically useful, for
ensuring the convergence of the estimation errors in (7) is possible and summarized
in the following theorem.

THEOREM 1. Sustained the assumptions (A1)–(A4), the parametric observers

in (5) with the dynamics for the intermediate states in (6) ensure that
• θ̃(t), α̃(t) ∈ L∞ ;
˙
• θ̃(t), ˙
α̃(t) → 0 as t → ∞.
Moreover, if θ̃(t) and α̃(t) approach some constant vectors as t → ∞, the asymp-
totic stability of the parametric equilibrium can be obtained.
Proof. Select
1 T
V (θ̃, α̃) = (θ̃ θ̃ + α̃ T α̃) (8)
2
as the Lyapunov function for the estimation error dynamics. The time derivative
V̇ (θ̃, α̃) can then be calculated as following

V̇ (θ̃, α̃) = θ̃ T θ̃˙ + α̃ T α̃˙

= −c1 (θ̃1 sin(x1 ) + θ̃2 (x1 − x3 ))2 − c2 (α̃1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̃2 x4 )2

0. (9)
The fact of V̇ (θ̃(t), α̃(t))
0 in (9) implies that (θ̃ T (t)θ̃ (t) + α̃ T (t)α̃(t))

V (θ̃(0), α̃(0)) and hence bounded stability of θ̃ and α̃(t) in (7). Denote $1 (t) =
θ̃1 sin(x1 ) + θ̃2 (x1 − x3 ) and $2 (t) = α̃1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̃2 x4 . Equation (9) implies that
$1 (t), $2 (t) ∈ L2 and θ̃(t), α̃(t) ∈ L∞ . These facts, together with the assumptions
278 J. T. HUANG

(A2), (A3), imply that $1 (t), $2 (t) ∈ L∞ ⇒ θ̃(t), ˙ ˙

α̃(t) in (7) are bounded. By
directly differentiating with time, we have $̇1 (t) = θ̃ 1 sin(x1 ) + θ̃˙ 2 (x1 − x3 ) +
˙
θ̃1 cos(x1 )x2 + θ̃2 (x2 − x4 ) and $̇2 (t) = α̃˙ 1 (x1 − x3 ) − α̃˙ 2 x4 + α̃1 (x2 − x4 ) − α̃2 ẋ4 .
It follows immediately that $̇1 (t), $̇2 (t) ∈ L∞ based on (A2), (A3). The facts
of $1 (t), $2 (t) ∈ L2 and $̇1 (t), $̇2 (t) ∈ L∞ ensure that $1 (t), $2 (t) → 0 as
t → ∞ by Barbalat’s Lemma [11]. Hence, θ̃(t) ˙ ˙
and α̃(t) in (7) approach zero as
t → ∞. Denote limt →∞ θ̃ = θ and limt →∞ α̃ = α , which are well-defined
p p

by assumption. It follows that limt →∞ $1 (t) = (limt →∞ θ̃1 )(limt →∞ sin(x1 )) +

p p
(limt →∞ θ̃2 )(limt →∞ (x1 − x3 )) = θ1 sin x̄1 + θ2 (x̄1 − x̄3 ) = 0 and limt →∞ $2 (t) =
p
(limt →∞ α̃1 )(limt →∞ (x1 − x3 )) − (limt →∞ α̃2 )(limt →∞ x4 ) = α1 (x̄1 − x̄3 )−
p
α2 x̄4 = 0. Therefore, by (A4), it can then be concluded that limt →∞ θ̃ =
limt →∞ α̃ = 0. ✷

Remark. Mostly, θ̃(t) and α̃(t) approach some constant vectors as t → ∞

˙
on conditions that θ̃(t), ˙
α̃(t) → 0 as t → ∞. Unfortunately, they are not
guaranteed [9]. In cases of not being so, the proposed design achieves only bounded
stability of the estimation error dynamics.

4. Simulation Results
To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design, simulations of the pro-
posed design will be given in this section.
The reference trajectory for x1 to follow is
qd (t) = A sin(ωt), (10)
with the amplitude A and the angular velocity ω being at disposal. The robust
control method in [18] is adopted herein to track the trajectory qd in (10). For ease
of reference, the control law is rewritten in the following
u = uN + uF (11)
with
4
1 ∗ d qd
uN = Jr∗ q̈d + (mgl) ∗
q̈d cos qd − (mgl) ∗ 2
q̇ sin qd + J
ke∗ d l
dt 4
∗ ∗ ∗ ∗
+ µ w2N + (mgl) sin qd + Jl q̈d ,
uF = −k 3 JrM w
2
where
x4 − w2∗
2 =
w ,
k3
w2∗ = w2N
∗
+ w2F ∗
,
A NEW APPROACH TO PARAMETRIC IDENTIFICATION 279

∗ (mgl)∗ cos qd q̇d + Jl∗ (d3 qd /dt 3 )

w2N = q̇d + ,
ke∗
∗ ∗ ∗
w2F = −k(x3 − w1F − w1N )
∗ (mgl) sin qd + Jl∗ q̈d
∗
w1N = qd +
ke∗
∗ −ẽ2 JlM k
w1F = 2
kem
ẽ2 = x2 − q̇d + k(x1 − qd )

in which the superscript ∗ denotes the nominal value, the subscripts M and m
denote the largest and the smallest admissible value of a parameter, and k is the
so-called attenuation factor at disposal. The control (11) ensures boundedness of
all closed-loop signals and, more importantly, arbitrarily small tracking errors by
using sufficiently large k values. Hence, assumptions (A2), (A3) sustain then. Ful-
fillment of (A4) can be verified by contradiction. First, if the basis functions sin x̄1
and (x̄1 − x̄3 ) are linearly dependent, then x̄3 = x̄1 −a sin x̄1 , a ∈ R. By substituting
them into (4.2) and integrating both sides explicitly, one obtains that

x̄2 = (θ1 + aθ2 ) cos x̄1 (12)

which, taking (4.1) into account, implies that

x̄1 = (θ1 + aθ2 ) sin x̄1 . (13)

It follows immediately that

x̄3 = [θ1 + a(θ2 − 1)] sin x̄1 ,
(14)
x̄4 = [θ1 + a(θ2 − 1)] cos x̄1 .
Now, by plugging (13) and (14) into (4.4), we have
1
u(t) = − [θ1 + a(α1 + θ2 − 1)] sin x̄1 + α2 [θ1 + a(θ2 − 1)] cos x̄1 ,
β1
which apparently contradicts the control given in (11) and hence sin x̄1 and x̄1 − x̄3
is linearly independent in terms of the steady-state trajectory. The linear indepen-
dence of the other two basis functions (x̄1 − x̄3 ) and x̄4 can be checked in a similar
way. Thereafter, (A4) is also fulfilled under such circumstances.
The initial states for simulations are taken to be x(0) = [0, 0, 0, 0]T , θ̂(0) =
[2.5, 50]T , and α̂(0) = [166.7, 0.167]T , while the system and the control para-
meters are listed in Table I. The system parameters are copies from those in [15]
while the attenuation factor is decreased to be only 50, much smaller than the value
1000 in [18], for the sake of reducing the control torque. The prices are larger
tracking errors in this case. However, it does not influence the estimation accuracy
as long as the assumptions (A1)–(A4) still sustain. The output tracking errors are
280 J. T. HUANG

Table I. The system and control parameters

Symbols Values Units

mgl 5.0 [N m]
mgl ∗ 4.5 [N m]
Jl 1.0 [kg m2 ]
Jl∗ 0.8 [kg m2 ]
JlM 1.4 [kg m2 ]
Jr 0.3 [kg m2 ]
Jr∗ 0.18 [kg m2 ]
JrM 0.42 [kg m2 ]
µ 0.1 [kg m2 /sec]
µ∗ 0.07 [kg m2 /sec]
ke 100.0 [N m]
ke∗ 75.0 [N m]
kem 60.0 [N m]
A 3.0 [rad]
ω 5.0 [rad/sec]
k 50.0 [–]
c1 1.0 [–]
c2 1.0 [–]

shown in Figure 1, while the parameter errors are depicted in Figures 2–5. It can be
seen that the parameter errors converge quickly to zeros within 30 seconds, which
demonstrate well the superiority of the proposed design over other methods.

5. Discussions
In this paper we have proposed a parametric identification design for a single-
link flexible-joint manipulator. Given a priori the motor inertia, it guarantees the
bounded stability of the estimation error dynamics. Moreover, the asymptotic sta-
bility of the parametric equilibrium can be achieved on conditions that the basis
functions are linearly independent in terms of the steady-state trajectories and
the estimation errors converge to some constant vectors. It can incorporate with
any a control method capable of sustaining a steady-state motion within which
the criteria are fulfilled. The achievement does not require the measurement of
the acceleration signals. Simulation of this scheme with a specific robust control
design has verified the theory. For actual implementation of this design, however,
the requirement of all states being measurable may restrict its usefulness. There-
fore, further improvements are required for its practical applications and under our
investigation.
A NEW APPROACH TO PARAMETRIC IDENTIFICATION 281

Figure 1. Output tracking errors vs. time.

Figure 2. Parameter error trajectory for θ1 .

282 J. T. HUANG

Figure 3. Parameter error trajectory for θ2 .

Figure 4. Parameter error trajectory for α1 .

A NEW APPROACH TO PARAMETRIC IDENTIFICATION 283

Figure 5. Parameter error trajectory for α2 .

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