Robust tracking of robot manipulator with nonlinear friction using time delay control with gradient estimator

Abstract

We propose an enhanced controller to improve the robustness of Time Delay Control (TDC) for a robot manipulator in the presence of nonlinear friction, such as Coulomb friction. The problem of TDC is first analyzed with TDC as a trajectory control for a robot manipulator in the presence of nonlinear friction. Gradient estimation is used to solve this problem. The proposed controller is called TDC with Gradient Estimator (TDCGE). Comparing with a prior research to improve the robustness of TDC, named TDCSA, the TDCGE is much simpler to design. Through 1 DOF linear motor experiment, it is verified that the TDCGE is more robust against nonlinear friction than TDC and the TDCGE has a similar robustness to the TDCSA. In addition, it is confirmed that the TDCGE is easily implemented in the multi degree-of-freedom robot manipulator through a 3 DOF spatial robot manipulator experiment.