Predefined-Time Sliding Mode Control of Robotic Manipulators via Artificial Delay Feedback and Reinforcement Learning

To address the rigid temporal constraints and high-precision trajectory tracking requirements in modern industrial automation (e.g., high-speed pick-and-place or collaborative assembly), this paper proposes a novel composite control strategy for robotic manipulators that integrates Actor–Critic reinforcement learning with predefined-time sliding mode control (PTC-RLC). Existing predefined-time control (PTC) schemes usually rely on excessively large switching gains when dealing with strong disturbances, which easily triggers severe chattering in the system’s actuators and degrades dynamic performance. To this end, a novel predefined-time sliding surface based on artificial delay feedback is designed, ensuring that the position tracking error can strictly converge within a user-explicitly set time Tc regardless of the system’s initial states, thereby significantly enhancing temporal determinism. Meanwhile, a reinforcement learning agent based on the Actor–Critic architecture is constructed to approximate and dynamically compensate for the system’s lumped unknown dynamics and external disturbances online, minimizing the control law’s reliance on large robust gains. Based on Lyapunov stability theory, the semi-global uniform ultimate boundedness of the closed-loop system is strictly proved. Numerical simulation results demonstrate that under severe operating conditions with parameter mismatches and time-varying disturbances, the proposed control strategy not only achieves high-precision and singularity-free trajectory tracking within the predefined time, but also effectively suppresses high-frequency chattering phenomena compared to the traditional non-singular terminal sliding mode control (NTSMC), outputting a smoother control torque and demonstrating strong potential for practical engineering implementations.