Trajectory tracking of mobile manipulator for welding task using sliding mode control

This paper proposed a sliding mode control method for a two-wheel welding mobile manipulator to track a smooth 3D curved welding path. To design a tracking controller, the tracking errors are defined between the welding point of the torch and the reference point moving at a specified constant welding speed on the welding path. A sliding surface is set up and a control law is proposed for stabilization of the sliding surface. The simulations are performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed controller.