Design Robust Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control Technique for Robot Manipulator Systems with Modeling Uncertainties

This paper describes the design and implementation of robust nonlinear sliding mode control strategies for robot manipulators whose dynamic or kinematic models are uncertain. Therefore a fuzzy sliding mode tracking controller for robot manipulators with uncertainty in the kinematic and dynamic models is design and analyzes. The controller is developed based on the unit quaternion representation so that singularities associated with the otherwise commonly used three parameter representations are avoided. Simulation results for a planar application of the continuum or hyper-redundant robot manipulator (CRM) are provided to illustrate the performance of the developed adaptive controller. These manipulators do not have rigid joints, hence, they are difficult to model and this leads to significant challenges in developing high-performance control algorithms. In this research, a joint level controller for continuum robots is described which utilizes a fuzzy methodology component to compensate for dynamic uncertainties.