Tracking control via switched Integral Sliding Mode with application to robot manipulators

Abstract This paper presents a switching structure scheme for motion control of industrial robot manipulators. To overcome the issues deriving from choosing a priori a specific control scheme, which can result in limited performances when the operating condition of the system varies, the scheme implements both a decentralized approach, suited for lower performance requirements and high transmission ratios, and the inverse dynamics based centralized approach, suited for higher performances in terms of velocity and acceleration. In both cases, the Integral Sliding Mode algorithm is used to compensate matched disturbances and to estimate the unmodeled dynamics used for the switching decision mechanism.