A Disturbance Observer-based Robust Tracking Controller for Uncertain Robot Manipulators

This paper considers the trajectory tracking problem for uncertain robot manipulators subject to external disturbance torques. The external disturbance torques are assumed to be unknown and time-varying. We present a disturbance observer-based controller which estimates the lumped disturbance (the external disturbance torque combined with the effect of plant uncertainties), and compensates it so that the overall closed-loop system behaves like the nominal closed-loop system that is composed of the nominal model of robot manipulator and the feedback linearization-based tracking controller. A simplified implementation of the proposed controller is also introduced. Simulation results on a robot manipulator are given to validate the performance of the proposed controller.