Abstract In this paper, a fixed‐time sliding‐mode fault‐tolerant control (FTC) strategy is proposed, where a funnel function is incorporated to guarantee prescribed performance of robotic manipulators under unknown dynamics and actuator faults. Firstly, an unknown system dynamics estimator (USDE) is introduced to estimate the unknown system states and disturbances. In addition, a funnel function is employed to reconstruct the tracking error in order to improve the transient and steady‐state performance of the system, upon which a fixed‐time non‐singular terminal sliding‐mode (FTNTSM) surface is designed. Subsequently, to deal with actuator faults, a compensation item is constructed based on sliding‐mode techniques. Thereafter, it is rigorously proven by the Lyapunov stability theory that the tracking error is guaranteed to remain within the boundaries prescribed by the funnel function. Finally, simulation results further confirm the reliability and practicality of the designed strategy.
Cao et al. (Tue,) studied this question.