Non-singular Terminal Sliding Mode Control of Robot Manipulators with $$H_\infty $$ Trajectory Tracking Performance

Abstract

This paper develops a novel non-singular terminal sliding mode control scheme for trajectory tracking of robot manipulators in the presence of external disturbances and uncertainties. Firstly, with the introduction of two nonlinear terms, a newly terminal sliding surface is designed. Then utilizing this sliding surface, a novel non-singular terminal sliding mode controller is proposed to eliminate the reaching interval, singularity issue and subsequently with this controller, the finite time error convergence is also assured. In the proposed controller, radial basis function neural network is employed to approximate highly uncertain nonlinear dynamics of robot manipulators using update laws derived with Lyapunov approach. Meanwhile, the effects of approximation errors are attenuated with $$H_\infty $$ performance criterion by introducing a robust term into the controller. As a result of proposed approach, asymptotic convergence of tracking errors is achieved within finite time and the approximation errors are attenuated to desired levels. The numerical simulation result shows the effectiveness of proposed controller for the case of microbot type robot manipulator.