Theory and experiments of global adaptive output feedback tracking control of manipulators

A new adaptive controller for robot manipulators is proposed. The new approach uses only position measurements. The main conclusions derived from the closed-loop system analysis are in two main results. In the first one, the global convergence of the position and velocity tracking errors is stated by using a condition that relates the viscous friction damping and the desired joint speed. In the second one, such a condition is dropped out but the local exponential stability of the closed-loop system is shown. To confirm the theoretical conclusions, a detailed experimental study in a two degrees-of-freedom direct-drive manipulator is provided, where the performance of the new controller is compared with respect to a known output feedback adaptive controller.