A SLIDING MANIFOLD APPROACH TO THE FEEDBACK-CONTROL OF RIGID ROBOTS

In this paper we propose a sliding manifold approach to the control of rigid robotic manipulators. We design a PD feedback controller via si ngular perturbation theory which guarantees the tracking of a referenc e trajectory. The control signal tends during a fast transient to the well-defined equivalent control with fast nonoscillating modes and the n it remains close to this in the uniform topology. Then the resulting closed-loop system does not have the drawbacks of high-gain feedback systems, even if it retains robustness properties with respect to dist urbances and plant parameter uncertainties. An application of the prop osed procedure to a robotic system which includes actuator dynamics an d tachometers is presented.