Adaptive terminal sliding mode control for rigid robotic manipulators

In order to apply the terminal sliding mode control to robot manipulators, prior knowledge of the exact upper bound of parameter uncertainties, and external disturbances is necessary. However, this bound will not be easily determined because of the complexity and unpredictability of the structure of uncertainties in the dynamics of the robot. To resolve this problem in robot control, we propose a new robust adaptive terminal sliding mode control for tracking problems in robotic manipulators. By applying this adaptive controller, prior knowledge is not required because the controller is able to estimate the upper bound of uncertainties and disturbances. Also, the proposed controller can eliminate the chattering effect without losing the robustness property. The stability of the control algorithm can be easily verified by using Lyapunov theory. The proposed controller is tested in simulation on a two-degree-of-freedom robot to prove its effectiveness. © 2011 Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.