A robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control for rigid robotic manipulators (Q1306141)

A robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control for rigid robotic manipulators is proposed. The main contributions are that an adaptive terminal sliding mode control technique is implemented for \(n\)-link rigid robotic manipulators. The bounded property of the norm of \(\dot M(q)\) (\(M\) is the inertia matrix) is investigated in detail; it is useful in the design of the adaptive sliding mode controller. The prior knowledge of the upper bounds of the system uncertainties is not required in the controller design, and an adaptive mechanism is introduced to estimate the parameters of the system uncertainty bounds. The estimates are then used as controller parameters such that the effects of the system uncertainties can be eliminated and finite time error convergence can be guaranteed. The experimental results have shown that not only good tracking performance has been obtained, but also the amplitude of the control inputs has been considerably reduced.