Sliding Mode Force and Motion Control and Stabilization of Elastic Manipulator in the Presence of Uncertainties

This article considers the question of position and force control of three-link elastic robotic systems on a constraint surface in the presence of robot parameter and environmental constraint geometry uncertainties. The approach of this article is applicable to any multi-link elastic robot. A sliding mode control law is derived for the position and force trajectory control of manipulator. Unlike the rigid robots, sliding mode control of an end point gives rise to unstable zero dynamics. Instability of the zero dynamics is avoided by Controlling a point that lies in the neighborhood of the actual end point position. The sliding mode controller accomplishes tracking of the end-effector and force trajectories on the constrained surface; however, the maneuver of the arm causes elastic mode excitation. For point-to-point control on the constraint surface, a stabilizer is designed for the final capture of the terminal state and vibration suppression. Numerical results are presented to show that in the closed-loop system position and force control is accomplished in spite of payload and constraint surface geometry uncertainty