Robust nonlinear control of a 6 DOF parallel manipulator: Task space approach

This paper presents a robust nonlinear controller for a 6 degree of freedom (DOF) parallel manipulator in the task space coordinates. The proposed control strategy requires information on orientations and translations in the task space unlike the joint space or link space control scheme. Although a 6 DOF sensor may provide such information in a straightforward manner, its cost calls for a more economical alternative. A novel indirect method based on the readily available length information engages as a potential candidate to replace a 6 DOF sensor. The indirect approach generates the necessary information by solving the forward kinematics and subsequently applying alpha-beta-gamma tracker. With the 6 DOF signals available, a robust nonlinear task space control (RNTC) scheme is proposed based on the Lyapunov redesign method, whose stability is rigorously proved. The performance of the proposed RNTC with the new estimation scheme is evaluated via experiments. First, the results of the estimator are compared with the rate-gyro signals, which indicates excellent agreement. Then, the RNTC with on-line estimated 6 DOF data is shown to achieve excellent control performance to sinusoidal inputs, which is superior to those of a commonly used proportional-plus-integral-plus-derivative controller with a feedforward friction compensation under joint space coordinates and the nonlinear controller under task space coordinates.