Computer-based Regressor-free Adaptive Control versus Direct Adaptive Fuzzy Control of the Robotic System

A comprehensive comparison between regressor-free control and direct adaptive fuzzy control of flexible-joint robots is addressed in this paper. In the proposed regressor-free controller, two critical practical situations are considered: the fact that robot actuators have limited voltages, and limitation on the number of measurement devices. However, in the article "decentralized direct adaptive fuzzy control for flexible-joint robots," these limitations have been neglected. It should be noted that a few solutions for the voltage-bounded robust tracking control of flexible joint robots have been proposed. In this paper; we contribute to this subject by presenting a new form of voltage-based controllers. The closed-loop control system stability is proved, and uniformly boundedness of the joint position errors is guaranteed. As a second contribution of this paper, we present a robust adaptive control scheme without the need for computation of the regressor matrix with the same result on the closed-loop system stability. Experimental results of the proposed controller and the decentralized direct adaptive fuzzy controller are produced using MATLAB/SIMULINK external mode control on a single-link flexible-joint electrically driven robot. Experimental and analytical results demonstrate the high performance of the proposed control scheme.