Reference model adaptive control of robot manipulator

The problem of robot control has been the target of many researchers in the last decades. The core of this problem is to establish a robust controller to manipulate the robot joint actuation signal in such a way that the overall motion of the robot tracks the desired trajectory despite change in system dynamics. Among the techniques used for this purpose, adaptive control is getting more attention because of its reliability, and its tolerance to model uncertainty. In this paper, an adaptive control scheme based on direct Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) mechanism to adapt the actuation signal of the controller using Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) is applied to a two link robot manipulator. The direct MRAC system updates the controller parameters utilizing the error signal between the reference model and the plant; however, in this work the adaptation signal is added directly to the controller output. For this purpose, two inputs - one output FLC is used as adaptation mechanism for the classical PD controller. The performance of the system is tested in simulation on two joints robot using Simulink(R).