TDE based model-free control for rigid robotic manipulators under nonlinear friction

This paper establishes a model-free finite-time tracking control of nonlinear robotic manipulator systems. The proposed controller incorporates both time delay estimation (TDE) and an enhanced terminal sliding mode control (TSMC). The improved TSMC scheme is devised using fractional-order TSMC (FOTSMC) and proportional-integral-derivative (PID) control to obtain robust tracking and high control performance. The TDE is designed to estimate the unknown nonlinear dynamics of robotic manipulators including the Stribeck friction and the external disturbances. Due to Stribeck friction, the effect of TDE error may fail to obtain the desired error performance; thus, another TDE loop is devised to compensate for TDE error generated by non-smooth frictions. The Lyapunov criterion is used to investigate the finite-time stability to analyze the behavior of the designed approach. Finally, computer simulations of the proposed method on PUMA 560 robotic manipulators are performed in contrast with FOTSMC and adaptive fractional-order nonsingular terminal sliding mode control (AFONTSM).