Fixed-time compliant motion/force control of robotic manipulators with environmental constraints

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to design a new compliant motion/force control strategy for robotic manipulators with environmental constraints in the sense of fixed-time stability. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates a novel compliant motion/force control strategy for robotic manipulators with environmental constraints. By using the Lyapunov theory and fixed-time stability theory, a non-singular terminal sliding mode manifold is first established. Then, the compliant motion/force controller is designed, and relevant conditions are given for guaranteeing that the robotic manipulator can track the prescribed constrained trajectory while exerting a desired force to the environment in fixed-time. An illustrative example is presented to show the effectiveness of our proposed control strategy. Findings Based on fixed-time stability theory, the desired compliant motion/force controller for robotic manipulators with environmental constraints is developed. Originality/value Compared with most existing literature, the proposed fixed-time compliant motion/force control strategy can provide the upper bound of the settling time independent of the initial conditions in designing procedure and is more practical for the real-world applications.