Abstract: Uncertainty and external disturbance are the main factors which degrade the robot control precision. Kinematic uncertainty is not considered by conventional terminal sliding mode control. A new robotic manipulator task space robust tracking control approach is studied with continuous non-singular terminal sliding mode. The proposed control approach has strong robustness and can deal with kinematic and dynamic uncertainty. It achieves finite-time stability for robot task space tracking control. The existing robot terminal sliding mode control is extended by the proposed approach form joint space to task space. Kinematic uncertainty and dynamic uncertainty are considered together in the controller design. By using norm definitions of vector and matrix, a measure approach is presented for system uncertainty. In light of Lyapunov redesign method and bounded stability theory, the corresponding stability analysis is presented and the estimated methods for settling time and tracking error residual set are also developed explicitly. In simulation, the proposed approach is compared with the existing robot joint space terminal sliding mode tracking control. These comparisons validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Key words: Control systems, Robots, Robust control, Uncertain systems, Fe-24Mn-7Al-1C, Light-weight, Microbands, Microscopic deformation mechanism, Wear resistant steel, Lining plates