External Force Disturbance Rejection in Robotic Arms: An Adaptive Approach

This paper is devoted to the problem of force sensorless disturbance rejection in robot manipulators. In the proposed approach, the control system uses position sensor signals and estimated values of external forces, instead of force sensor signals. The estimation process is performed via an adaptive force estimator. Then the estimated force vector is utilized to compensate for the force disturbance effect in order to achieve a better trajectory tracking performance. The force estimation is carried out directly using no environment model. Asymptotical stability of the proposed control system is analyzed by the invariant set and Lyapunov direct method establishing an appropriate theorem. Finally, the performance of the proposed control system is verified using numerical simulation. key words: adaptive control, robotic arm, force estimation, disturbance rejection, Lyapunov direct method, invariant set theorems