Robust model free control of robotic manipulators with prescribed transient and steady state performance

In this paper, we propose a robust model free control scheme of minimal complexity (it is a static scheme involving very few and simple calculations to output the control signal) for robotic manipulators, capable of achieving prescribed transient and steady state performance. No information regarding the robot dynamic model is employed in the design procedure. Moreover, the tracking performance of the developed scheme (i.e., convergence rate and steady state error) is a priori and explicitly imposed by a designer-specified performance function, and is fully decoupled by both the control gains selection and the robot dynamic model. In that respect, the selection of the control gains is only confined to adopting those values that lead to reasonable control effort. Finally, two experimental studies in the joint and the Cartesian workspace clarify the design procedure and verify its performance and robustness against external disturbances.