Accepted Date: 19.11.2002 ADAPTIVE FUZZY SLIDING MODE CONTROL FOR A CLASS OF BIPARTITE MODULAR ROBOTIC SYSTEMS

One of the fundamental issues in the field of modular robotics is the design and implementation of robotic systems with low cost and high performance. Although the coordination of modules entails the minimization of several different performance criteria, the success of the evolution of a group of the modules is strictly dependent upon the fulfillment of control goals. The cost of the modules, on the other hand, is subject to the components used to measure the state, and the hardware used for actuation. Therefore, obtaining a good control performance with cheap hardware is a challenge for control specific issues. In this paper, we describe an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control scheme implemented on the control of 3-DOF I-Cubes links, which operate in a highly information-limited environment due to the size constraints, and which are bipartite. The tuning law is justified both in continuous time and in discrete time cases of sliding mode control approach. The implementation results justify the theoretical foundations and strongly recommend the approach due to its low computational cost together with the robustness against disturbances and uncertainties