This paper presents the design and development of a laboratory facilityconstituting a constrained planar flexible manipulator system. The system isdesigned for experimental investigations within research programmes involvingflexible manipulator systems. An outline of a generic design procedure forflexible manipulator systems is given. The design criteria developed throughthis procedure account for the strength and stiffness of the manipulator and therequired transducers and instrumentation. These are considered in detail and thesystem designed accordingly. Finally, practical problems encountered arehighlighted and methods of dealing with such problems are presented anddiscussed.
