Vibration damping in manipulation of deformable linear objects using sliding mode control

In this paper, we proposed a position-based control strategy for eliminating the vibration at the end of deformable linear objects (DLOs) during its manipulation. Using Schur decomposition of matrices and linear transform of variables, actuated and underactuated parts of the DLO dynamic model are separated. Based on the decoupled dynamic model of a DLO system, a sliding mode control with exponential approach law is designed to force the state variables to converge to an equilibrium and to allow vibration at the end of the DLO to be damped quickly. The DLO system, subjected to control input saturation, is further studied to solve the input saturation problem. An adaptive sliding mode control law is designed to suppress the damping at the end of the DLO. Proposed control strategies are verified by numerical simulations. The simulation results show that proposed methods can effectively damp the vibration at the end of the DLO.