Robust Adaptive Control of Voltage Saturated Flexible Joint Robots with Experimental Evaluations

This paper is concerned with the problem of designing and implementing a robust adaptive control strategy for the flexible joint electrically driven robots (FJEDR) while considering the constraints on the actuator voltage input. The control design procedure is based on the function approximation technique, to avoid saturation besides being robust against both structured and unstructured uncertainties associated with external disturbances and un-modeled dynamics. Stability proof of the overall closed-loop system is given via the Lyapunov direct method. The analytical studies as well as experimental results obtained using MATLAB/SIMULINK external mode control on a single-link flexible joint electrically driven robot, demonstrate a high performance of the proposed control schemes.