A robust anti-windup control design for electrically driven robots — Theory and experiment

Abstract

A Robust Anti-Windup Control (RAWC) method is proposed for n-Degree-of-Freedom (DOF) electrically driven robots considering the actuator voltage saturation. The actuator’s saturation is fairly modeled by a smooth nonlinear function and the control design task is developed to avoid windup besides being robust against both model uncertainties and external disturbances. As a major point, the paper also takes into consideration the fact that windup phenomenon can be caused by some strong disturbances. As a result, being robust to external disturbances promises safer situation against windup. The proposed controller needs no saturation output feedback and torque’s measurement for control implementation. The analytical studies as well as the experimental results produced using MATLAB/SIMULINK External Mode Control on a 2-DOF robot manipulator driven by geared Permanent magnet DC motors prove the superiority of the proposed approach.