Tracking Control of Rigid-Link Electrically-Driven Robot Manipulators Operating Under Motion Constraints

This paper introduces a robust corrective tracking controller for rigid-link electrically-driven (RLED) robot manipulators operating under motion constraints. Using models of the robot dynamics an environmental constraints, a dynamic model with decoupled position and force degrees of freedom (DOF) is obtained for the mechanical subsystem with respect to a set of task space coordinates. A corrective tracking control is then formulated for the decoupled manipulator dynamics and the electrical actuator dynamics. The controller is robust with respect to parametric uncertainties and additive bounded disturbances in the RLED dynamic model. The controller requires measurement of the robot link positions, link velocities, and motor armature currents.