Sliding manifold approach to the control of rigid robots: Experimental results

This paper presents a set of experimental results on a Comau SMART-3 S robot manipulator. The manipulator links are required to follow a desired trajectory, possibly also taking account of limits on the maximum allowable rate of the control torques. The control strategy considered to solve this problem is based on the singular perturbation theory, combined with a sliding manifold approach. The resulting control law proves to be robust against plant uncertainties and external disturbances, while exhibiting high accuracy in tracking prescribed trajectories. The experiments confirm the results expected by the theory. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.