Hybrid force/position control scheme for flexible joint robot with friction between and the end-effector and the environment

In this paper a novel adaptive-sliding mode control design is developed for trajectory tracking of a class of flexible robots. This control design uses a force/position controller for robots with flexible joints where the friction between the end effector and the environment is taken into account. For systematic reasons the controller is designed considering the rigid links subsystem and the flexible joints. The proposed control system, satisfies the stability of the two subsystems and cope with the uncertainty of the robot dynamics. The feedback for the flexible subsystem is based on the joint torque signal and estimation of the torque derivative which is provided by a nonlinear sliding observer. For the stability of the observer, it is assumed that the uncertainty of the observed system is bounded. A MRAC algorithm is used for the estimation of the friction forces at the contact point between the end effector and environment. Finally simulation results are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.