A VSS CONTROL METHOD FOR A MANIPULATOR DRIVEN BY AN ARTIFICIAL MUSCLEACTUATOR

In this paper a new VSS control law using a combination of feedforward control and VSS control for systems having unknown parts is proposed. The full dynamic model of the manipulator is generated, a very robust VSS control method is proposed, and the stability and the tracking er ror convergence of the model are analyzed by means of Lyapunov stabili ty theory. The tracking error closed loop system is stable and the err or converges asymptotically to zero. A modification of the VSS control method to deal with external disturbances is proposed. The validity o f the proposed method is shown by simulations. (C) 1998 Scripta Techni ca.