Variable gains PD tracking control of robot manipulators: Stability analysis and simulations

In this work we present the stability analysis of a tracking Proportional-Derivative (PD) robot manipulator controller, with variable P and D gains. We show that under a proper selection of the bounds of the variable gains, the tracking error is uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulations of the controller tuned by a self-organizing fuzzy algorithm, applied to tracking control of a robot manipulator are presented, proving its better performance in terms of position errors when compared with a classic PD controller.