Review Summary :

The referees consistently observe that the contribution of the paper is too limited for a journal publication and that the deepness of the technical contents is insufficient. Authors illustrate by qualitative and discursive arguments a multi-loop control strategy for flexible manipulators, and show successful simulation results. The authors should, either - improve significantly the theoretical foundation of the work by supporting the presented scheme by means of a technically sound stability analysis that should be much stronger than that given in Section IV. - present experimental results. If the authors decide to improve the theoretical foundation by providing a rigorous convergence proof then experiments would be not mandatory. However, the comparison with conventional controllers must be more fair as "industrial control" would never perform so bad like shown eg in Figure 7. If the authors decide to present experimental results then it could be acceptable a less rigorous substantiation of the algorithm stability and performance, whose description has to be improved - in any case - as compared to the submitted draft. I would recommend address both issues thereby making the paper much stronger than its present form. All the remarks of the reviewers should be carefully taken into account if the authors decide do submit a revised version of the paper.

Reviewer 1's Comment :

Reviewer 2's Comment :

This paper is interesting, well organized and presented, technically accurate, with adequate citations. The practical usefulness of the work to the robotics community is less clear. Comment 1: The assumption that the entire mass of the moving system can be modeled as a point mass at the load, with no rotational inertia in the load or in the robot arms, seems a little extreme or contrived. To this extent the design does not seem to be very practical. It's almost as if it the whole arrangement was designed, not for optimum dynamics and minimum vibration, but to make the analysis and control easier: ultimately, the system equation of motion is that of a point mass. Comment 2: It seems to me that the inner control systems are equivalent to attempting to get the motors to act as ideal actuators, thereby making the outer control problem a kinematic one. The English is understandable, although in many places it could be improved. I think the paper can be published, although I would like to see some improvements, and perhaps some comments on the above and following points. The sentence beginning "It is worth noting ..." towards the end of col 2 of p.3 of the

paper (page 4 of the on-line version) is hard to understand. First, the "opening angle" is mentioned for the first time, as if it were obvious what it is. Second, it says that "delta-P", defined in the previous sentence, depends on this opening angle, as if the definition depended on the angle, which presumable it does not. Both points could be clarified by suitable re-wording. The compliance matrix seems to be determined by "numerical experiment" on an FEM model of the robot. Why not determine it by a real experiment on the actual robot, presumably with the motors locked? In the results, it seems a little flattering to describe the response when only the inner loop is closed as corresponding to the response with servomotors used in "industrial robot control". Industrial robots would hardly be designed like this one, the design of which almost invites flexibility and vibration challenges.

Reviewer 3's Comment :

The paper discusses on the development of a robust controller for a 3-DOF flexible robot. Inner and outer loops were designed for motor's position control and tip's vibration control respectively. Technically, the paper is correct. However, in my opinion contribution of this paper as a journal publication is limited as the paper is almost similar to the previous paper including derivation of dynamic model and control algorithm: Partida G, Jaramillo VH, Feliu V. "Mass variations robot controller, for a 3-DOF flexible robot, Proc. of IEEE Industrial Electronics Conf, pp. 1558-1564, Nov 2010. Moreover, the paper is merely a simulation work with insufficient analysis and discussion on the results. In my opinion more simulation study should be perform to grant a journal publication. Perhaps this is a good conference paper.