3296 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO.
9, SEPTEMBER 2009
Neural-Network-Based Terminal Sliding-Mode
Control of Robotic Manipulators Including
Actuator Dynamics
Liangyong Wang, Tianyou Chai, Fellow, IEEE, and Lianfei Zhai
Abstract—A neural-network-based terminal sliding-mode con-
trol (SMC) scheme is proposed for robotic manipulators including
actuator dynamics. The proposed terminal SMC (TSMC) allevi-
ates some main drawbacks (such as contradiction between control
efforts in the transient and tracking errors in the steady state) in
the linear SMC while maintains its robustness to the uncertainties.
Moreover, an indirect method is developed to avoid the singularity
problem in the initial TSMC. In the proposed control scheme, a ra-
dial basis function neural network (NN) is adopted to approximate
the nonlinear dynamics of the robotic manipulator. Meanwhile, a
robust control term is added to suppress the modeling error and
estimate the error of the NN. Finite time convergence and stability
of the closed loop system can be guaranteed by Lyapunov theory.
Finally, the proposed control scheme is applied to a robotic manip-
ulator. Experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed
control scheme by comparing it with other control strategies.
Index Terms—Finite time convergence, neural network (NN),
robotic manipulator, robust control, terminal sliding mode.
I. I NTRODUCTION
S LIDING-MODE control (SMC) is one of the most im-
portant approaches to handle systems with uncertainties,
nonlinearities, and bounded external disturbances. SMC has
been widely used in many applications [1]–[4], such as robots,
aircrafts, motors, and so on. A linear sliding-mode technique
can only guarantee the asymptotic error convergence; therefore,
error dynamics cannot converge to zero in finite time. To get
faster error convergence, however, the sliding-mode parameters
must be augmented. This will, in turn, increase the gain of the
controller, which may result in the saturation of control input
signals. This is undesirable in practical robot control.
Terminal SMC (TSMC) was first proposed by
Venkataraman et al. [5] and Man et al. [6]. Similar to the
linear sliding-mode technique, strong robustness with respect
to uncertain dynamics can be achieved. Moreover, the tracking
error converges to zero in finite time on the terminal sliding
mode. By introducing a nonlinear term in the SMC and
Manuscript received January 15, 2008; revised November 11, 2008. First
published January 9, 2009; current version published August 12, 2009. This
work was supported in part by the National Fundamental Research Program
of China under Grant 2009CB320601, by the State Key Program of National
Natural Science of China under Grant 60534010, by the Funds for Creative
Research Groups of China under Grant 60521003, and by the 111 Project under
Grant B08015.
The authors are with the Key Laboratory of Integrated Automation of Process
Industry, Ministry of Education, and the Research Center of Automation,
Northeastern University, Shenyang 110004, China (e-mail: sywangliangyong@
gmail.com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIE.2008.2011350
0278-0046/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE
Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
suitably designing the controller, the ultimate tracking error
and the gain of the terminal sliding-mode controller can
significantly be reduced in comparison with the conventional
linear sliding-mode controller. However, the initial TSMC
[5]–[7] encountered singularity problem [8], which would
generate an unbounded control signal. Later, Feng et al. [9] and
Yu et al. [10] proposed a nonsingular terminal sliding manifold
and avoided the singularity problem, which can be categorized
into a direct method. However, the time taken to reach the
terminal sliding mode strongly depended on the error dynamics
of the robotic manipulators. Moreover, the controllers proposed
in [9] and [10] used computed torque control law and needed
the knowledge about model characteristics and parameters.
Man and Yu [11] adopted an indirect approach to avoid
the singularity by switching from terminal to linear sliding
manifold. In this paper, we work along the indirect method to
provide an improved solution.
The controllers mentioned earlier strongly depend on the
model of the robotic manipulator, where a regression matrix of
robot functions must be tediously computed from the dynamics
of each specific robotic manipulator. Without the requirement
of the model knowledge of the controlled plant, neural networks
(NNs) can be adopted to control the robotic manipulator. In
the past decade, NNs have been widely investigated [12].
Lewis et al. [13] developed a multilayer NN controller for a
general serial-link rigid robot arm. The structure of the NN
controller was derived using a filtered error/passivity approach.
Ge et al. [14] also used radial basis function (RBF) network to
estimate elements of inertia matrix, Coriolis/centrifugal matrix,
and gravitational force vector for the dynamics of robotic
manipulators in task space. However, both Lewis and Ge only
provided simulation results. Recently, with the fast computing
hardware technologies, real-time control using NN becomes
more feasible [15]. Lee and Choi [16] proposed an adaptive
neurocontroller for robotic manipulators based on RBF net-
work. The proposed adaptive neurocontroller was applied to
a SCARA-type robotic manipulator. Wai and Yang [17] ad-
dressed adaptive fuzzy NN control for an n-joint robot manip-
ulator including actuator dynamics and provided experimental
results.
To the authors’ best knowledge, Lin [18] first incorporated
the terminal sliding manifold and intelligent approaches to
control robotic manipulators. Although Lin proposed a direct
method to avoid singularity problem, the proposed controller
was of inverse dynamic property, and only simulation result
WANG et al.: SLIDING-MODE CONTROL OF ROBOTIC MANIPULATORS INCLUDING ACTUATOR DYNAMICS
was given in the paper. This paper works along to provide an
indirect solution and corresponding experiments on a standard
robotic manipulator.
The neural-network-based TSMC of robotic manipulators
with actuators is investigated. The main contributions of this
paper are listed as follows.
1) A modified terminal sliding manifold is proposed, which
consists of terminal and general sliding manifolds. As
a result, singularity is advisably avoided by switching
between the terminal and general sliding manifolds.
2) A neural-network-based TSMC is developed for robotic
manipulators with actuator dynamics. By exploring
some inherent properties of robotic manipulators, the
control law performs a widely used structure of a
nonlinear proportional-derivative (PD) controller plus a
compensator.
3) Finite time convergence and stability of the closed loop
system can be guaranteed by Lyapunov theory.
4) The proposed control method is applied to a robotic
manipulator. Experimental results confirm the validity of
the proposed control scheme by comparing it with other
control strategies.
This paper is organized as follows. The RBF network and the
dynamics of a robot manipulator including actuator dynamics
are described in Section II. The definition of a terminal sliding
manifold, controller design, and stability analysis are given in
Section III. Experimental results are provided in Section IV.
Finally, conclusions are drawn in Section V.
II. S YSTEM D YNAMICS AND P RELIMINARIES
A. RBF Network
RBF network is well known in the field of approximation
of nonlinear functions. For it has a simple structure and a fast
convergence property, the following RBF network [19] will be
used to approximate the continuous function f (x) : Ra → Rb
as follows:
f (x) = W ∗T φ(x) + ε
where W ∗T = [w1 , w2 , . . . , wl ] ∈ Rb×l is the ideal weight
matrix, x ∈ Ra is the input vector, l is the number of neurons
in a hidden layer, ε is the modeling error of the RBF NN, and
φ(x) = [φ1 (x), φ2 (x), . . . , φl (x)]T . φi (x) can be chosen as the
commonly used Gaussian function, which is in the follow-
ing form:
 
−(x−μi )T (x−μi )
φi (x) = exp , i = 1, 2, . . . , l (2)
2σi2
where μi = [μi1 , μi2 , . . . , μia ]T is the center of the recep-
tive field, σi is the width of the Gaussian function, and
0 < φi (x) ≤ 1.
B. Dynamics of Robotic Manipulator With Actuators
The dynamics of a serial n-joint robotic manipulator can be
written in the Lagrangian form [20], [21]
M (q)q̈ + C(q, q̇)q̇ + G(q) + B q̇ = τ
Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3297
where q ∈ Rn is the joint position vector, q̇ ∈ Rn denotes the
joint velocity vector, τ ∈ Rn is the applied torque input vector,
M (q) ∈ Rn×n is the symmetric positive definite manipulator
inertia matrix, C(q, q̇)q̇ ∈ Rn is the vector of centripetal and
Coriolis torques, and G(q) ∈ Rn stands for the vector of gravi-
tational torques due to the gravity. B = diag{B1 , B2 , . . . , Bn }
is a diagonal matrix of the viscous friction coefficients of the
robotic manipulator.
However, to implement proper control algorithms, the afore-
mentioned dynamic model for a robotic manipulator should
be converted to the equivalent dynamics with respect to the
actuators [22].
Let each joint of a robotic manipulator be driven by a dc
servomotor. The manipulator–actuator dynamics at the motor
shaft can be described by the following:
τm = Jm q̈m + Bm q̇m + τ1 (4)
where τm ∈ Rn is the torque vector developed by the mo-
tors, qm ∈ Rn represents the angular position vector of the
motors, and τ1 ∈ Rn denotes the load torque vector at the
motor shaft. Jm = diag{Jm1 , Jm2 , . . . , Jmn } is diagonal ma-
trix of the moment of inertia of the motor shafts, Bm =
diag{Bm1 , Bm2 , . . . , Bmn } is a diagonal matrix of the viscous
friction coefficients of the motor shafts.
As each joint is driven by a dc servomotor through a har-
monic drive transmission system, we can obtain that
τ1 = N τ (5)
q = N qm (6)
where N = diag{n1 , n2 , . . . , nn } is a diagonal matrix of the
gear ratios.
The torque developed by the dc motor is proportional to the
armature current. Therefore, we can get
τ m = Kτ u (7)
(1)
where Kτ = diag{Kτ 1 , Kτ 2 , . . . , Kτ n } is a diagonal matrix
of the torque constants, and u ∈ Rn stands for the armature
current vector of the motors.
From (3)–(7), the manipulator–actuator dynamic model can
be written as
MH (q)q̈ + CH (q, q̇)q̇ + GH (q) + BH q̇ = u (8)
where MH = Kτ−1 (N M + N −1 Jm ), CH = Kτ−1 N C, BH =
Kτ−1 · (N B + N −1 Bm ), and GH = Kτ−1 N G.
In general, the manipulator–actuator dynamics still has the
following three properties [20].
Property 1: The inertia matrix MH (q) is symmetric and
positive, which is also bounded as
m1 x2 ≤ xT MH (q)x ≤ m2 x2 ∀x, q ∈ Rn
(3) where m1 and m2 are positive constants.
3298 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009

Property 2: The matrix CH (q, q̇) and the time derivative of

the inertia matrix MH (q) satisfy
 
xT ṀH (q) − 2CH (q, q̇) x = 0 ∀x, q, q̇ ∈ Rn .

Property 3: The dynamics of the manipulator–actuator can

be linearly parameterized as follows:

Y (q, q̇, q̈)η = MH (q)q̈ + CH (q, q̇)q̇ + GH (q)

where η ∈ Rp is a constant vector of system parameter, and

Y (q, q̇, q̈) ∈ Rn×p denotes a measurable regression matrix with
q, q̇, and q̈.
Let qd be a given twice differentiable desired trajectory and
define the tracking error e = qd − q. The control objective is to
design a stable control law to ensure that the tracking error e
converges to zero in finite time. Fig. 1. Proposed modified terminal sliding manifold.

If p can be chosen as p > 1/2, there is no negative fractional

III. T ERMINAL S LIDING -M ODE C ONTROLLER D ESIGN
U SING A DAPTIVE RBF N ETWORK
A. Terminal Sliding Manifold
Similar to linear SMC (LSMC), the TSMC [6] needs to
define a special variable called terminal sliding manifold in the
following form:
S = ė + Λep = q̇r − q̇ (9)
with q̇r = q̇d + Λep , and ep = [ep1 , . . . , epn ]T where p = p1 /p2 ,
p1 and p2 are positive odd integers satisfying p2 > p1 , and Λ is
a positive definite and diagonal parameter matrix.
The ith element of S in (9) can be written into the follow-
ing form:
power in q̈r . However, in the case that Si = 0 and ei = 0,
there still exists the singularity problem. Man and Yu [11]
addressed an indirect approach to avoid the singularity. In this
method, singularity was avoided by switching between the
terminal and linear sliding manifolds. However, the effect of
the singularity cannot completely be eliminated as a result of
rough switch. Our proposed modified terminal sliding manifold
in the following works along this problem to produce smoother
switch.
In the proposed method, singularity is avoided by switching
from the terminal to general sliding manifold. The general
sliding manifold can be nonlinear or time varying [23]. In this
paper, the general sliding manifold is constructed by quadratic
functions. In order to demonstrate the proposed approach, we
first modified q̇r as

Si = ėi + Λii epi . (10) q̇ri = q̇di + λi (ei ), i = 1, 2, . . . , n (14)

On the terminal sliding mode (Si = 0), it follows that with

⎧ p
⎨Λii ei , if Si = 0 or Si = 0, |ei | > esi
ėi + Λii epi = 0. (11)
λi(ei ) = K1i ei +K2i e2i , if Si = 0, 0 < ei ≤ esi
⎩
It has been shown in [6] that ei = 0 is the terminal attractor of K1i ei −K2i e2i , if Si = 0, −esi ≤ ei ≤ 0
(15)
the system (11). Then, the time tei for tracking error ei reaching
zero is where K1i = (2 − p)ep−1 p−2
si , K2i = (p − 1)esi , esi is a positive
constant, and Λii is a positive constant.
ei (0)1−p
tei = . (12) Remark 1: The choice of K1i and K2i is to make the
Λii (1 − p) function λi (ei ) and its time derivative continuous.
The modified terminal sliding manifold is shown in Fig. 1
Differentiating q̇r with respect to time, we can obtain that
and addressed as
q̈r = q̈d + pΛdiag[ep−1 p−1
1 , . . . , en ]ė. As q̈r contains a negative
fractional power p − 1, this may cause a singularity problem if S = ė + λ(e) (16)
ė = 0, when ei = 0.
On the terminal sliding mode (Si = 0), it follows from where λ(e) = [λ1 (e1 ), λ2 (e2 ), . . . , λn (en )]T .
(11) that Remark 2: By choosing p > 1/2, the singularity problem
on terminal sliding mode (Si = 0) can be avoided. In the case
q̈ri = q̈di + pΛii ep−1
i ėi that Si = 0, the terminal sliding manifold is switched into the
= q̈di − pΛii ep−1 Λii epi general sliding manifold when ei enters the region |ei | ≤ esi .
i
Thus, the singularity problem in the case that Si = 0 and ei = 0
= q̈di − pΛ2ii e2p−1
i . (13) can also be overcome.

Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
WANG et al.: SLIDING-MODE CONTROL OF ROBOTIC MANIPULATORS INCLUDING ACTUATOR DYNAMICS
B. Controller Design
Differentiating S with respect to time and utilizing (8), the
closed loop dynamics can be written as
MH (q)Ṡ = −CH (q, q̇)S − u + f (17)
where the nonlinear robot function is
f = MH (q)q̈r + CH (q, q̇)q̇r + GH (q) + BH q̇.
If the nonlinear robot function f is clearly known, then the
controller can be defined as
u = f + KS r (18)
where K is a positive definite and diagonal constant matrix, and
r = r1 /r2 , where r1 and r2 are positive odd integers satisfying
r2 > r1 , S r = [S1r , . . . , Snr ]T .
The control input u in (18) includes a nonlinear PD term in
that KS r = K[ė + λ(e)]r .
Substituting (18) into (8), we can get the closed loop system
as follows:
MH (q)Ṡ + CH (q, q̇)S + KS r = 0. (19)
The stability of the closed loop system (19) can be easily
proved by Lyapunov theory. Unfortunately, if both the pa-
rameters and structure of f are unknown, the model-based
controllers cannot be applied. Hence, we adopt RBF network
to approximate the nonlinear function f .
Assume that there exists a constant ideal weight matrix W ∗
so that the robot function according to (1) can be written as

f = W ∗T φ(x) + ε (20)
where the input vector x = [q T , q̇ T , q̇rT , q̈rT ]T ∈ R4n .
Remark 3: The modeling error ε exists due to the finite
dimensional hidden nodes of the RBF network. However, the
modeling error ε can make a very small value. For a given
positive constant εN , we can always find an RBF network such
that ε ≤ εN , where  •  denotes the Euclidean norm of a
vector.
Select the control input
u = fˆ + KS r + u0 = Ŵ T φ(x) + KS r + u0 (21)
with
(σ + σ1 )S/S,  0
S=
u0 =
0, S=0
where fˆ is the estimate of f , Ŵ is the estimate of the ideal
weight W ∗ , u0 is designed to provide robustness in the face of
the modeling and estimating errors of RBF network, σ > εN ,
and σ1 is a positive constant, which will be defined as follows.
The weight update law is provided by
˙ √
Ŵ = Γφ(x)S T (22)
where Γ is a positive definite and diagonal matrix.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3299
Substituting the proposed controller (21) into (8), we can get
the closed loop dynamics equation as follows:
MH (q)Ṡ = −CH S − KS r + W̃ T φ(x) + ε − (σ + σ1 )S/S
(23)
where W̃ = W ∗ − Ŵ is the weight estimation error of the RBF
network.
C. Stability Analysis
Theorem 1: For the manipulator–actuator dynamic model
(8), if the terminal sliding manifold is chosen as (16), the
controller is (21), and the weight update law is chosen as (22),
then all the signals of the closed loop system are bounded.
Proof: Select the following Lyapunov function candidate:
1 T 1
V (t) = S MH S + trace(W̃ T Γ−1 W̃ ) (24)
2 2
where trace(•) is the trace operator.
Differentiating (24) with respect to time and using (23), we
can obtain that
1 ˙ )
V̇ (t) = S T MH Ṡ + S T ṀH S + trace(W̃ T Γ−1 W̃
 2
= S T − CH (q, q̇)S − KS r + W̃ T φ(x) + ε
 1
− (σ + σ1 )S/S + S T ṀH S
2
T −1 ˙
+ trace(W̃ Γ W̃ )
1  
= S T ṀH − 2CH (q, q̇) S − S T KS r + S T ε
2 
˙
− (σ + σ1 )S − trace W̃ T Γ−1 Ŵ − φ(x)S T .
(25)
Using (22) and evoking the property 3 of the robotic manip-
ulator, we have
V̇ (t) ≤ −S T KS r − σ1 S ≤ 0. (26)
Inequality (26) implies that both S and W̃ are bounded.
Meanwhile, considering (16), it can be obtained that both e and
ė are bounded. Furthermore, the boundedness of q and q̇ can
be derived due to the boundedness of qd and q̇d . As a result,
all signals on the right side of (23) are bounded; hence, Ṡ is
bounded. Therefore, all signals of the closed loop system are
bounded. 
In Theorem 1, we have proved the stability of the robotic
manipulator system (8) with control law (21) and weight update
law (22). However, it is not necessary for the modified terminal
sliding manifold S to approach zero in finite time. Therefore,
we address the next theorem to guarantee the modified terminal
sliding manifold S to approach zero in finite time.
As mentioned earlier, the Gaussian function φi (x) is
bounded by 0 < φi (x) ≤ 1. Therefore, φ(x) is bounded by
φ(x) ≤ l (27)
with φ(x) = [φ1 (x), φ2 (x), . . . , φl (x)]T .
3300 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009

According to the property of Frobenius norm, it can be to zeros is

obtained that
  [1−(1+r)/2]
V1 (0)
 T  ts =
(1+r)/2 . (32)
W̃ φ(x) ≤ W̃ F φ(x) . (28)
F λmin (K) 2
m2 [1 − (1 + r)/2]
From theorem 1, (27), and (28), it can be concluded that
W̃ T φ(x)F is bounded. Remark 4: When the terminal sliding manifold Si reaches
Lemma 1: Suppose a1 , a2 , . . . , an and 0 < p1 < 1 are all zero, there are two possible cases for tracking error ei ap-
positive numbers, then the following inequality holds (for proaching zero. At the first case that |ei | > esi as the terminal
proof, see [10]): sliding manifold Si reaches zero, tracking error ei will approach

2 zero along the terminal sliding manifold. At the second case,
2 2p tracking error ei will approach zero along the general sliding
a1 + a22 + · · · + a2n 1 ≤ a2p
1
1
+ a2p
2
1
+ · · · + a2p
n
1
.
manifold. By choosing a small enough esi such that |ei | > esi
Theorem 2: For the manipulator–actuator dynamic as the terminal sliding manifold Si reaches zero, tracking error
model (8), the controller is (21) with the modeling error ei will approach zero along the terminal sliding manifold. As
ε and the estimation error W̃ T φ(x); if the design parameter discussed in (11) and (12), finite convergence of tracking error
σ1 in (21) is selected as σ1 ≥ W̃ T φ(x)F , then the modified ei is achieved.
terminal sliding manifold S and tracking error e converge to Remark 5: As can be seen from (32), the time tS taken to
zeros in finite time. reach the terminal sliding mode is independent of the error dy-
Proof: Select another Lyapunov function candidate namics of robotic manipulator due to the constant boundedness
m2 of the inertia matrix.
1 T
V1 = S MH S. (29)
2
IV. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
Differentiating (29) with respect to time and using (23), we
can obtain that A. Description of the Robotic Manipulator System
 In order to evaluate the control performance of the proposed
V̇1 = S T − CH (q, q̇)S − KS r + W̃ T φ(x) + ε controller, an IMI Zebra Zero robotic manipulator with six
 1 joints is employed as a test bed in this paper. Each joint is
− (σ + σ1 )S/S + S T ṀH S driven by a dc servomotor through a harmonic drive transmis-
2
sion system. The drivers of these motors are of torque input
1 T 
control type.
= S ṀH − 2CH (q, q̇) S − S T KS r + S T ε
2 The high performance of a robot control system depends
+ S T W̃ T φ(x) − (σ + σ1 )S not only on the control algorithm but also on the hardware
  system. However, most commercial control systems of the
= − S T KS r + S T W̃ T φ(x) + S T ε − (σ + σ1 )S robotic manipulator are closed to the researcher. In order to
implement complex control algorithms, a new control system
≤ − S T KS r ≤ 0. (30) is developed to replace the initial commercial control sys-
tems of the IMI Zebra Zero robotic manipulator. The system,
Using Lemma 1 and property 1 of the robotic manipulator, including hardware and software, combines an experimental
we obtain apparatus with an easy-to-use software platform based on
Matlab/Simulink and dSPACE control system. The structure of
V̇1 ≤ − S T KS r
this robotic manipulator system is shown in Fig. 2. The control

n
law is implemented on a dSPACE DS1103 controller board with
≤ − λmin (K) Sir+1 Power PC processor at 1 GHz. In the experiments, only the joint
i=1
positions are measured using optical encoders mounted on the
 (1+r)/2 
n
(1+r)/2
motor shaft with 1.3 × 10−4 rad/pulse for the first three joints.
2 1
≤ − λmin (K) m2 Si2 To avoid excessive noise caused by numerical approximation,
m2 2
i=1 the joint velocities are estimated using a first-order filter. The
 (1+r)/2  (1+r)/2 sampling time is selected as 0.001 s.
2 1 T
≤ − λmin (K) S MH (q)S
m2 2
 (1+r)/2 B. Performance Indices
2 (1+r)/2
= − λmin (K) V1 (31)
m2 As in [4], the following performance indices will be used to
measure the quality of each control algorithm.
where λmin (K) is the minimum eigenvalue of matrix K.  T
From (31) and according to Lemma 2 in [7], it follows that 1) L2 [e] = (1/Tf ) 0 f |e|2 dt, which is the scalar valued
the time ts for modified terminal sliding manifold S converging L2 norm, is used as an objective numerical measure of

Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
WANG et al.: SLIDING-MODE CONTROL OF ROBOTIC MANIPULATORS INCLUDING ACTUATOR DYNAMICS 3301

Fig. 2. Hardware configuration of the control system.

average tracking performance for the entire error curve

e(t), where Tf represents the total running time.
2) eF = maxTf −2≤t≤Tf {|e(t)|}, which is the maximal ab-
solute value of the tracking error during the last two
seconds, is used as an index of measure of the final
tracking accuracy.
 T
3) L2 [u] = (1/Tf ) 0 f |u|2 dt, which is the average con-
trol input, is used to evaluate the amount of control effort.
4) um = max{|u(t)|}, which is the maximal absolute value
of the control effort, is used as an index of measure of
Fig. 3. Measured and reference trajectories for TSMC. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2.
transient performance. (c) Joint 3.

C. Experimental Results
For the IMI Zebra Zero robotic manipulator, the position of
the robot end effector is determined by the first three joints, and
the orientation of the end effector is determined by the second
three joints. The position and orientation of the end effector can
be controlled independently. For simplifying, the position of the
end effector is considered. The experimental results of the first
three joints are described and discussed. First, the reference tra-
jectories are defined as qd1 (t) = 0.1 + 0.3 sin(t) rad, qd2 (t) =
0.05 + 0.2 sin(0.5t) rad, and qd3 (t) = −0.1 + 0.3 sin(t) rad
for joints 1, 2, and 3, respectively. The initial state of the joints
q(0) = [0, 0, 0]T . The following three controllers are compared.
1) TSMC: The proposed control scheme in this paper is ad-
dressed in (21). The weight update law is provided by (22). The
numbers of neurons in the input and hidden layers are 12 and
21, respectively. The initial weights are zeros. The parameters
are chosen as K = diag[0.4, 0.4, 0.6], Λ = diag[10, 10, 10],
Γ = 0.2, σ = 0.003, σ1 = 0.005, p = 5/7, r = 9/11, and eS =
1.0 × 10−4 diag[1, 1, 1]. The measured and reference trajecto-
ries are shown in Fig. 3. The tracking errors and the control
inputs for TSMC are shown in Figs. 4 and 5, respectively. Fig. 4. Tracking errors for TSMC. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.
Remark 6: The number of the neurons in the input layer is
selected as the size of the input vector x. Motivated by the cross-
validation method [24], which starts by moving bottom–up, 2) PD Control: The PD control for the robotic manipulator
the choice of 21 hidden-layer neurons is made as follows. can be written as u = KP e + KD ė. The design parameters KP
First, we select the mean-squared tracking error L2 [e] as the and KD are selected as diag[12, 18, 18] and diag[0.4, 0.6, 0.6],
selection criteria different from cross-validation method using respectively. The tracking errors and the control inputs for PD
the mean-squared prediction errors. Then, four experiments are control are shown in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively.
performed, using 6, 11, 16, and then 21 hidden-layer neurons. 3) LSMC: For comparison, LSMC scheme using RBF net-
It is observed that going from 6 to 16 neurons significantly work [16] is performed with two differences: One is that the
improved the performance, but going from 16 to 21 neurons center and width of RBF network are not updated online, and
makes no perceptible improvement. Therefore, the number 21 the other is that the actuator dynamics are considered as done in
is chosen as the number of hidden nodes. this paper. We first define a linear sliding manifold S = ė + Λe,

Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3302 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009

Fig. 7. Control inputs for PD control. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.
Fig. 5. Control inputs for TSMC. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.

Fig. 6. Tracking errors for PD control. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.
Fig. 8. Tracking errors for LSMC. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.
which is widely used in the robot control. The control scheme
is addressed as The experimental results in terms of performance indices are
given Table I. As seen from the table, in terms of performance
u = fˆ + KS + u0 = Ŵ T φ(x) + KS + u0 indices, the performance of PD control is poorest in the three
controllers with the largest control inputs and tracking errors
with
while the TSMC performs best. The ultimate tracking errors
σS/S, S= 0 and the control inputs of the terminal sliding-mode controller
u0 =
0, S = 0. can significantly be reduced in comparison with the linear
sliding-mode controller.
˙
The weight update law of RBF network is provided by Ŵ =
T
ΓφS . The parameters are chosen as K = diag[0.3, 0.3, 0.5],
V. C ONCLUSION
Λ = diag[30, 30, 30], Γ = 0.4, and σ = 0.006. The structure of
RBF network is the same as that used in TSMC. The tracking In this paper, we present a terminal sliding-mode controller
errors and the control inputs for LSMC control are shown in using RBF NN, which is employed to approximate unknown
Figs. 8 and 9, respectively. nonlinear functions. No offline learning of RBF NN is needed

Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
WANG et al.: SLIDING-MODE CONTROL OF ROBOTIC MANIPULATORS INCLUDING ACTUATOR DYNAMICS
Fig. 9. Control inputs for LSMC. (a) Joint 1. (b) Joint 2. (c) Joint 3.
TABLE I
PERFORMANCE INDICES
for the proposed controller. Finite time convergence and sta-
bility of the closed loop system can be guaranteed by the
Lyapunov theory. The proposed control law is implemented
on a dSPACE DS1103 controller board interfaced to the Zebra
Zero robotic manipulator. Moreover, the experimental results
demonstrate that the ultimate tracking errors and the control
inputs of the terminal sliding-mode controller can significantly
be reduced in comparison with those of PD control and LSMC.
R EFERENCES
[1] J.-J. E. Slotine and W. Li, Applied Nonlinear Control. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1991.
[2] J. Imura, T. Sugie, and T. Yoshikawa, “Adaptive robust control of
robot manipulators—Theory and experiment,” IEEE Trans. Robot.
Autom., vol. 10, no. 5, pp. 705–710, Oct. 1994.
[3] K. Kim and Y. Hori, “Experimental evaluation of adaptive and robust
schemes for robot manipulator control,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron.,
vol. 42, no. 6, pp. 653–662, Dec. 1995.
[4] L. Xu and B. Yao, “Adaptive robust precision motion control of linear
motors with negligible electrical dynamics: Theory and experiments,”
IEEE Trans. Mechatron., vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 444–452, Dec. 2001.
Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
3303
[5] S. T. Venkataraman and S. Gulati, “Control of nonlinear systems using
terminal sliding modes,” J. Dyn. Syst. Meas. Control, vol. 115, no. 3,
pp. 554–560, Sep. 1993.
[6] Z. H. Man, A. P. Paplinski, and H. R. Wu, “A robust MIMO terminal
sliding mode control scheme for rigid robotic manipulator,” IEEE Tans.
Autom. Control, vol. 39, no. 12, pp. 2464–2469, Dec. 1994.
[7] Y. Tang, “Terminal sliding mode control for rigid robots,” Automatica,
vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 51–56, Jan. 1998.
[8] K.-B. Park and J.-J. Lee, “Comments on ‘A robust MIMO terminal slid-
ing mode control scheme for rigid robotic manipulators’,” IEEE Trans.
Autom. Control, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 761–762, May 1996.
[9] Y. Feng, X. H. Yu, and Z. H. Man, “Non-singular terminal sliding mode
control of rigid manipulators,” Automatica, vol. 38, no. 12, pp. 2159–
2167, Dec. 2002.
[10] S. Yu, X. H. Yu, and B. Shirinzadehc, “Continuous finite-time control for
robotic manipulators with terminal sliding mode,” Automatica, vol. 41,
no. 11, pp. 1957–1964, Nov. 2005.
[11] Z. H. Man and X. H. Yu, “Terminal sliding mode control of MIMO linear
systems,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. I, Fundam. Theory Appl., vol. 44,
no. 11, pp. 1065–1070, Nov. 1997.
[12] B. M. Wilamowski, N. J. Cotton, O. Kaynak, and G. Dundar, “Comput-
ing gradient vector and Jacobian matrix in arbitrarily connected neural
networks,” IEEE Trans. Ind Electron., vol. 55, no. 10, pp. 3784–3790,
Oct. 2008.
[13] F. L. Lewis, A. Yesildirek, and K. Liu, “Multilayer neural-net robot con-
troller with guaranteed tracking performance,” IEEE Trans. Neural Netw.,
vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 388–399, Mar. 1996.
[14] S. S. Ge, C. C. Hang, and L. C. Woon, “Adaptive neural network control
of robot manipulators in task space,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 44,
no. 6, pp. 746–752, Dec. 1997.
[15] S. Jung and S. S. Kim, “Hardware implementation of a real-time neural
network controller with a DSP and an FPGA for nonlinear systems,” IEEE
Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 265–271, Feb. 2007.
[16] M.-J. Lee and Y.-K. Choi, “An adaptive neurocontroller using RBFN for
robot manipulators,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 711–
717, Jun. 2004.
[17] R. J. Wai and Z. W. Yang, “Adaptive fuzzy neural network control de-
sign via a T–S fuzzy model for a robot manipulator including actuator
dynamics,” IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern. B, Cybern., vol. 38, no. 5,
pp. 1326–1346, Oct. 2008.
[18] C. K. Lin, “Nonsingular terminal sliding mode control of robot manipu-
lators using fuzzy wavelet networks,” IEEE Trans. Fuzzy Syst., vol. 14,
no. 6, pp. 849–859, Dec. 2006.
[19] J. Park and I. W. Sandberg, “Universal approximation using radial-
basis-function networks,” Neural Comput., vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 246–257,
Mar. 1991.
[20] F. L. Lewis, C. T. Abadallah, and D. M. Dawson, Control of Robot
Manipulator. New York: Macmillan, 1993.
[21] F. Reyesa and R. Kelly, “Experimental evaluation of model-based
controllers on a direct-drive robot arm,” Mechatronics, vol. 11, no. 3,
pp. 267–282, Apr. 2001.
[22] D. S. Yoo, M. J. Chung, and Z. Bien, “Real-time implementation and
evaluation of dynamic control algorithms for industrial manipulators,”
IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 26–31, Feb. 1991.
[23] C. Y. Su and Y. Stepanenko, “Adaptive sliding mode control of robot
manipulators: General sliding manifold case,” Automatica, vol. 30, no. 9,
pp. 1450–1497, Sep. 1994.
[24] U. Anders and O. Korn, “Model selection in neural networks,” Neural
Netw., vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 309–323, Mar. 1999.
Liangyong Wang received the B.Eng. and M.Eng.
degrees in control theory and engineering from
Northeastern University, Shenyang, China, in 2001
and 2004, where he is currently working toward the
Ph.D. degree in the Key Laboratory of Integrated Au-
tomation of Process Industry, Ministry of Education,
and the Research Center of Automation.
His current research interests are robotics, adap-
tive control, nonlinear control, and neural networks.
3304 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2009

Tianyou Chai (F’08) received the Ph.D. degree Lianfei Zhai received the B.Eng. degree in
in control theory and engineering from the North- control engineering from Zhengzhou University,
eastern University of Technology, Shenyang, China, Zhengzhou, China, in 2002. She is currently working
in 1985. toward the Ph.D. degree in the Key Laboratory of In-
He is currently a Professor and the Head of the tegrated Automation of Process Industry, Ministry of
Research Center of Automation, Northeastern Uni- Education, and the Research Center of Automation,
versity, Shenyang, and he is also the Director of the Northeastern University, Shenyang, China.
Key Laboratory of Integrated Automation of Process Her research interests include adaptive control,
Industry, Ministry of Education, Northeastern Uni- neural network control, decoupling control, and con-
versity. His research interests include adaptive con- trol application.
trol, intelligent decoupling control, integrated plant
control and system, and the development of control technologies with applica-
tions to various industrial processes.
Dr. Chai was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering
in 2003 and elected as an International Federation of Automatic Control
(IFAC) fellow and an academician of the International Eurasian Academy of
Sciences in 2007. He was the recipient of the National Awards of Science
and Technology Progress of China, in 1999, 2001, and 2006, respectively, and
the 2002 HeLiang-HeLi Award for the Progress of Science and Technology.
He was a member of IFAC’s Technical Committee and the Chairman of
IFAC’s Coordinating Committee on Manufacturing and Instrumentation during
1996–1999.

Authorized licensed use limited to: CHOSUN UNIVERSITY. Downloaded on March 01,2020 at 01:41:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.