Tracking control of robot manipulators via output feedback linearization

This paper presents a robot manipulator tracking controller based on output feedback linearization. A sliding mode perturbation observer (SPO) is designed to estimate unmeasurable states and system perturbations that involve system nonlinearities, disturbances and unmodelled dynamics. The use of SPO allows to input/output linearize and decouple the strongly coupled nonlinear robot manipulator system merely by the feedback of joint angles. The controller design does not need an accurate model of the robot manipulator. Simulation studies are undertaken based on a two-link robot manipulator to evaluate the proposed approach. The simulation results show that the proposed controller has more superior tracking control performance, with payload changing in a wide range, in comparison with a sliding mode controller (SMC) designed based on state feedback linearization with full states available. Selected from Journal of Shenzhen University (Science & Engineering), 2005, 22(3)