Edinburgh Napier University

  This paper emphasizes the characterization of the dynamic motions of a robotic arm in terms of poles and zeros. The importance of the transmission zeros of open-loop systems, the role of these zeros in description of such systems, and the dependence of the transmission zeros on the actuators and sensor locations are addressed. The uses of Genetic Algorithms (GAs) for the optimal placement of the collocated actuators and sensors of such plants are presented. It is also demonstrated that GAs provides a synthesis technique that is both direct and uncomplicated for the design of active controllers for relatively flexible structures such as robotic arms. The genetic design of such active controllers is illustrated by regarding integral-square-error (ISE) as the ultimate design requirement. The effectiveness of this methodology is illustrated by application to a simple cantilever beam example.