Globally exponential continuous controller/observer for position tracking in robot manipulators with hysteretic joint friction

In this work, we present a continuous observer and continuous controller for a multiple degree of freedom robot manipulator with hysteretic joint friction. The fictitious hysteresis state is of course unknown to the controller and must be estimated. The joint velocities are assumed measured here. For this considered plant, we propose and present a continuous observer/controller that estimates or observes the hysteresis state and drives the position tracking error to zero. We prove that the combined tracking error and observer error converges to zero globally exponentially.