Active disturbance rejection control for robotic systems: A review

Abstract Over the past few decades, robotics technology and applications have attracted considerable interest from many researchers both in academia and industry. This interest mainly covers the development and implementation of control strategies for robotic systems such as adaptive control, robust control, active disturbance rejection control (ADRC), etc. The continuous complexity of physical systems that are being controlled necessitates some practical considerations for the controller design, analysis and implementation. In recent years, the ADRC approach has become a popular control framework adopted in robotic applications due to many advantages such as its simplicity of implementation as well as its robustness and ability to reject varying uncertainties and disturbances. This review paper provides a comprehensive assessment and insights into various ADRC frameworks developed for robotic systems and highlights the basic problems involved in this field. By a thorough review of existing ADRC schemes for robotic systems, recent results of these strategies that have broad implications are classified and analyzed in terms of their structural features and computational complexity. Moreover, we attempt in this review paper to provide a reference source in this area to help researchers and practitioners select a suitable ADRC structure for solving robotic application problems as well as to light up unsolved problems in the field. An example that illustrates the practical application of the linear and nonlinear ADRC to the 4-DOF robotic arm is presented in this review paper.