Adaptive sliding mode fuzzy control for unknown robots with arbitrarily-switched constraints

This article addresses the control problem of robots with unknown dynamics and arbitrarily-switched unknown constraints. Such kind of robots will be shown to be unknown hybrid systems with arbitrary switching and an Adaptive Sliding Mode Fuzzy Control (ASMFC) strategy is proposed that handles the unknown dynamics of the robot along with the unknown constraints arbitrary switching. The ASMFC is a synergy of finding a Common Lyapunov Function (CLF) between the resulted switched subsystems of the considered robots, employing the Fuzzy Logic Systems (FLS), and the use of the Sliding Mode Control (SMC). The CLF accommodates the constraints arbitrary switching, the SMC adds robustness against possible parameters drift, and the FLS approximates the unknown robot dynamics. All unknown parameters are adapted online and all closed loop signals are guaranteed to be bounded. The proposed strategy is validated by conducting an experiment on a KUKA Lightweight Robot (LWR) doing a typical force-guided peg-in-hole assembly task that falls in the category of robot systems under consideration. Excellent tracking performance is obtained when using the ASMFC strategy. Comparison is conducted with the performance of a PD controller that is widely used in commanding industrial robots and the superiority of the proposed strategy is shown.