Adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control using supervisory fuzzy control for 3 DOF planar robot manipulators

Control of an industrial robot includes nonlinearities, uncertainties and external perturbations that should be considered in the design of control laws. This paper presents a control strategy for robot manipulators, based on the coupling of the fuzzy logic control with the so-called sliding mode control, SMC, approach. The motivation for using SMC in robotics mainly relies on its appreciable features, such as design simplicity and robustness. Yet, the chattering effect, typical of the conventional SMC, can be destructive. In this paper, this problem is suitably circumvented by adopting an adaptive fuzzy sliding mode control, AFSMC, approach with a proportional-integral-derivative, PID sliding surface. For this proposed approach, we have used a fuzzy logic control to generate the hitting control signal. Moreover, the output gain of the fuzzy sliding mode control, FSMC, is tuned on-line by a supervisory fuzzy system, so the chattering is avoided. The stability of the system is guaranteed in the sense of the Lyapunov stability theorem. Numerical simulations using the dynamic model of a 3 DOF planar rigid robot manipulator with uncertainties show the effectiveness of the approach in trajectory tracking problems. The simulation results that are compared with the results of conventional SMC with PID sliding surface indicate that the control performance of the robot system is satisfactory and the proposed AFSMC can achieve favorable tracking performance, and it is robust with regard to uncertainties and disturbances.