Experimental results on variable structure adaptive robot control without joint velocity measurement

The problem of rigid robot manipulator tracking control without measurement of joint velocities and in the presence of parametric uncertainty is considered. A control strategy is proposed based on the VS-MRAC (variable structure model-reference adaptive control) scheme. Theoretical and experimental results on a PUMA 560 indicate that the strategy leads to remarkable tracking error transient behavior, stability and performance robustness with respect to parameter uncertainty, nonlinearities and disturbances.