An adaptive robust control scheme for robot manipulators with unknown backlash nonlinearity in gears

This paper presents an adaptive robust control algorithm for the nonlinear dynamics of robot manipulators with unknown backlash in gears. The basic nonlinear model of a serial manipulator robot is used for the controller design, and this is combined with the nonlinear proposed dead zone model, based on the input and output torque. The main idea of providing this model is to achieve a dynamic model of the system considering the backlash of the robot joint gears, and having less complexity such that the developed controller does not need the inverse backlash model. The adaptive robust controller is developed, without using the inverse backlash model. The proposed controller is designed based on an unknown dead zone parameter and it guarantees the stability and path tracking of the robot trajectory with unknown dead zone parameter in the desired range. Numerical simulations are conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller. Finally, the efficiency and capability of the proposed controller in dealing with the unknown backlash nonlinearities in gears of the manipulator are demonstrated by experimental results with a five-bar manipulator.