ROBUST ADAPTIVE-CONTROL OF FLEXIBLE-JOINT MANIPULATORS

This paper presents an application of the robust adaptive design proce dure developed in Jain and Khorrami (1995) to flexible joint manipulat ors. The design guarantees robustness to parametric and dynamic uncert ainties and also rejects any bounded, unmeasurable disturbances enteri ng the system. In the strict matching case, the scheme can be used to design robust controllers for robotic manipulators. The design is exte nded to systems transformable to a special strict feedback form. The p roposed scheme when applied to multi-link robotic manipulators with jo int flexibility guarantees a robust performance even if the Coriolis, centrifugal, joint flexibility and friction terms in the manipulator d ynamics are completely unknown. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rig hts reserved.