Experimental Study of Nonsingular Terminal Sliding Mode Controller for Robot Arm Actuated by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles

Abstract In this paper, experimental study of robust control for robot manipulator actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles was realized. The experimented controller belonged to the class of variable structure systems which is called nonsingular terminal sliding mode (NTSM). The control approach is based on the time delay estimation method. First, the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control approach was presented and the stability of the system in closed loop was analyzed using Lyapunov stability theorem. Second, in order to show the efficiency and the superiority of the proposed approach, experimental results are presented in regulation and trajectory tracking modes using 2-DOF robot manipulator actuated by pneumatic artificial muscles. Third, the controller robustness was tested.