Global convergence of the adaptive PD controller with computed feedforward for robot manipulators

Abstract

One of the simplest and naturally appealing adaptive tracking controllers for robot manipulators is the so-called adaptive PD controller with computed feedforward. Since its introduction, in the middle of eighties, to the best of author knowledge, only local convergence analyses have been presented. In this paper, based on some properties of the robot dynamics, which deal with continuously differentiable increasing saturating functions, we present the global convergence analysis of this adaptive tracking controller.