Tracking Synchronization Improvement of Networked Manipulators Using Novel Adaptive Nonsingular Terminal Sliding Mode Control

In this article, we focus on the experimental validation of the developed adaptive nonsingular terminal sliding mode (ANTSM) controller for a networked manipulator system. The proposed control approach is designed to deal with a combination of adverse and inexactly known conditions in practice, including parametric uncertainties, frictions, exogenous disturbances, and random time-varying network delays. Another issue addressed in this article is the tradeoff between achieving a smooth convergence and a high tracking accuracy in the physical implementation of the ANTSM controller. Hence, a novel time-varying gain in a form of logistic function is introduced to provide converging smoothness and meanwhile improve the tracking accuracy. Experimental results and empirical analysis are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and performance improvement of the proposed controller with a time-varying gain.