Adaptive control of flexible joint robots with stability in the sense of Lyapunov

A direct adaptive control scheme for flexible joint robots is described which does not use link jerk or acceleration. The suggested scheme is derived from a candidate Lyapunov function which guarantees zero tracking error asymptotically, and bounded parameter error. The control scheme does not require the numerical differentiation of the velocity signal or the inversion of the inertial matrices. Simulations are presented which verify the validity of the control scheme and its superiority over existing rigid robot adaptive control approaches