An Advanced Terminal Sliding Mode Controller for Robot Manipulators in Position Tracking Problem

Abstract

Scientists have always been drawn to robot manipulators because of their essential role in real applications. There have always been new control algorithms proposed to improve their performance. Following this trend, we develop an advanced terminal sliding mode control (TSMC) method for robot manipulators to address the position tracking problems. The development of the proposed controller is based on a modified sliding mode surface (SMS) and a super twisting control algorithm (STCA). The result of this combination is a worthy performance improvement including higher tracking accuracy, stronger against uncertain components, converges and stabilizes more quickly towards equilibrium. Especially, the proposed controller achieves convergence and stability in finite time. The simulation results performed for a 3 degrees of freedom (DOF) industrial robotic manipulator verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.