Neural network-based adaptive controller design of robotic manipulators with an observer

A neural network (NN)-based adaptive controller with an observer is proposed for the trajectory tracking of robotic manipulators with unknown dynamics nonlinearities. It is assumed that the robotic manipulator has only joint angle position measurements. A linear observer is used to estimate the robot joint angle velocity, while NNs are employed to further improve the control performance of the controlled system through approximating the modified robot dynamics function. The adaptive controller for robots with an observer can guarantee the uniform ultimate bounds of the tracking errors and the observer errors as well as the bounds of the NN weights. For performance comparisons, the conventional adaptive algorithm with an observer using linearity in parameters of the robot dynamics is also developed in the same control framework as the NN approach for online approximating unknown nonlinearities of the robot dynamics. Main theoretical results for designing such an observer-based adaptive controller with the NN approach using multilayer NNs with sigmoidal activation functions, as well as with the conventional adaptive approach using linearity in parameters of the robot dynamics are given. The performance comparisons between the NN approach and the conventional adaptation approach with an observer is carried out to show the advantages of the proposed control approaches through simulation studies.