Artificial Delay Based ARC of a Class of Uncertain EL Systems with Only Position Feedback

Abstract: In this paper, the tracking control problem of an Euler-Lagrange system is addressed with regard to parametric uncertainties, and an adaptive-robust control strategy, christened Time-Delayed Adaptive Robust Control (TARC), is presented. TARC approximates the unknown dynamics through the time-delayed estimation, and the adaptive-robust control provides robustness against the approximation error. The novel adaptation law of TARC, in contrast to the conventional adaptive-robust control methodologies, requires neither complete model of the system nor any knowledge of predefined uncertainty bounds to compute the switching gain, and circumvents the over- and underestimation problems of the switching gain. Moreover, TARC only utilizes position feedback and approximates the velocity and acceleration terms from the past position data. The adopted state-derivatives estimation method in TARC avoids any explicit requirement of external low pass filters for the removal of measurement noise. A new stability notion in continuous-time domain is proposed considering the time delay, adaptive law, and state-derivatives estimation which in turn provides a selection criterion for gains and sampling interval of the controller.