A REDESIGNED DCAL CONTROLLER WITHOUT VELOCITY-MEASUREMENTS - THEORY AND DEMONSTRATION

A link position tracking controller is formulated for an n-link, rigid , revolute, serially-connected robot. The controller generates torque commands to the individual robot links based on adaptive estimates of the system parameters and measurements of only link positions. A filte ring technique, based on the link position signal, is used to alleviat e the need for velocity measurements. A complete development of the co ntroller is presented along with a proof of semiglobal asymptotic link position-velocity tracking performance. Experimental validation of th e proposed controller on the Integrated Motion Inc. (IMI) two-link dir ect drive robot is also presented. Several extensions to the basic con troller are described that consider the use of fixed parameter estimat es.