Adaptive tracking control of rigid manipulators using only position measurements

Abstract

This article presents a new approach to trajectory tracking control of uncertain rigid manipulators using only position measurements. The proposed control strategy is an adaptive scheme that is very general and computationally efficient, requires virtually no information regarding the manipulator dynamic model, and is implementable without calculation of the robot inverse dynamics or inverse kinematic transformations. It is shown that the controller ensures semiglobal uniform boundedness of all signals in the presence of bounded disturbances, and that the ultimate size of the tracking errors can be made arbitrarily small. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the proposed strategy can be used as the basis for developing controllers for “cascaded” robotic systems, such as manipulators with significant actuator dynamics or joint flexibility. The efficacy of this approach to manipulator control is illustrated through both computer simulations and hardware experiments. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.