Time Varying Controller Design for Robot Manipulator Control.

This report studies the design of time-varying controller for robot manipulator control. Piece-wise constant time-varying controller is shown to be capable of producing desired fast response without causing overshoot. Such response can not be achieved with time-invariant controller. Nonlinear feedback linearization method is used to transform nonlinear robot equation into decoupled sets of second-order linear equations so that time-varying controller can be designed. Stability of time-varying system and time-varying control based on learning algorithm are also presented. This report comprise of the following four parts 1 Robot Manipulator Controller Design It was demonstrated that time-varying controllers can produce more desirable performances than those of time-invariant ones 2 Stability of Time-Varying System An important observation was made regarding stability in the design of time-varying systems. Implications of magnitude of change, and rate of change of parameter variations on stability are noted 3 Learning Controller Design One particular time-varying controller design approach that is of most interest to robot control is the learning control method. This part presents some preliminary results on learning control theory and 4 A collection of papers on work which are in part supported by this ONR contract.