Trajectory Control of Manipulators with Discrete-Time Learning Control

A discrete-time learning control for robotic manipulators is studied from a viewpoint of zeros of a control system. The signal used for learning is a position signal of each joint detected by a pulse encoder. Firstly, we show that when sampling period is small, the learning is unstable because of an unstable zero of the system. Secondly, we show that we can stabilize the learning control system with small sampling period by using a low pass filter, and also show that a tracking error converges not to zero but to a certain value in that case. Finally, experimental results on the trajectory control of robotic manipulators using the discrete-time learning control are shown. These experimental results agree well with the analytical ones.