Design of an new variable structure model following control system for robot manipulators

In this paper, a new design method of variable structure model following control system(VSMFCS) for robot manipulators is proposed. The proposed controller overcomed reaching phase problem by using function augmenting scheme to the sliding surface. Therefore, it can be guaranteed that the overall system always has a robust property against parameter variations and external disturbances. Furthermore, the proposed controller does not use the model state, .chi.$_{m}$, different from other previous works. Regardless of not using the model state, the model following error dynamics, virtual dynamics, is shown to be globally exponentially stable. The efficiency of the proposed method has been demonstrated by an example.e.