Advanced control techniques of robotic manipulators

In this tutorial, dynamic models of rigid body robots (RBRs), robots having motor dynamics (RMDs) and flexible joint robots (FJRs), are first presented in the order of complexity. The controller design is then formulated in a unified fashion for these three kinds of robots because of their inherent similar physical and mathematical properties. After a brief review of basic control techniques being used, the controller design for RBRs is discussed in detail and a comprehensive list of passive parameter estimators and robust parameter estimators is given. Subsequently, the control problems for RMDs and FJRs are treated in turns. While the two systems are different, it can be seen that they have very much similar properties, and accordingly can be analyzed similarly. It is shown that most of the existing popular controllers are special cases of the unified framework presented and derivations and proofs can be simplified owing to the common background of the problems.