Manual control of a flexible arm and application to automatic control systems

A human operator has the ability to control a complicated system such as a gantry crane, an aircraft and a remote manipulator after enough training and learning. In this article, we attempt the positioning experiment of a flexible arm by a human operator. Flexible arm has nonlinearlity and infinite-degrees of freedom in general; thus it is difficult to obtain a control input. The operator interprets a given task and finds the procedure of operations. He devises an effective way of achieving the goal on the basis of his experience and knowledge about the task.