This paper presents a two-time scale approach for vibration reduction of a high speed Cartesian manipulator. High speed manipulators would be subject to mechanical vibration due to high inertia forces acting on linkages. To achieve high throughput capability, such motion induced vibration would have to be damped quickly, to reduce settling time of the manipulator end-effector. This paper develops a two-time scale model for a structurally-flexible Cartesian manipulator. Based on the two-time scale model, a composite controller consisting of a computed torque method for the slow time-scale rigid body subsystem, and a linear quadratic state-feedback regulator for the fast time-scale flexible subsystem, is designed. Simulation results show that the proposed two time-scale controller yields good performance in attenuating structural vibration arising due to excitation from inertial forces.
