It is well known that a system of cooperating manipulators is redundantly actuated. This property can be used to actively distribute the loads within the system to achieve better performance. In this paper, the authors formulate and solve the force distribution problem for multiarm systems with flexible-link arms, with particular attention to the nonminimum phase character of the system. The solution is attained by optimization where objective functions include the weighted norm of actuator torques, weighted norm of elastic acceler ations, and their combinations. The numerical example shows that the proposed force distribution schemes are effective in stabilizing the system vibrations.
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