Robust adaptive neural tracking control for a class of electrically driven robots with time delays

This article addresses the problem of designing the robust tracking control for a class of uncertain electrically driven robots with time delays. The unknown time-delay uncertainty is assumed to be bounded by a function of all the state variables. By suitably choosing the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals, a novel adaptive/robust neural tracking control scheme is developed for the first time such that all the states and signals of the closed-loop time-delay robot system are bounded and the tracking error is shown to be uniformly ultimately bounded. By suitably designing the embedded current signal, the effect of time-delay uncertainty in the mechanical dynamics does not require to be incorporated into the current tracking error dynamics, and so the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functionals can be easily constructed in the stability analysis. Compared with the previous investigations of controlling robots the control scheme developed here can be extended to handle a broader class of electrically driven robots perturbed simultaneously by plant uncertainties, time-varying perturbations, and time-delay uncertainties. Finally, simulation examples are made to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.