Global joint position regulation of a class of torque-driven robot manipulators within actuators prescribed safe operating torque–speed area

Abstract

This paper addresses the joint position regulation of a class of n degrees of freedom torque-driven robot manipulators under a novel practical motivated control objective: Simultaneous Regulation & Prescribed Safe Operating Area (SR&PSOA). More specifically, torque–speed characteristic safe limit functions associated to each actuator are taking into account to ensure that besides of global joint positioning, the requested torque control inputs to robot actuators remain inside user prescribed safe operating torque–speed areas, so avoiding thermal and physical actuator damages. A static smooth nonlinear controller is proposed to achieve global position regulation under prescribed speed-depending bound torque input. Numerical simulations and experimental results are included to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.