Adaptive Continuous Integral-Sliding-Mode Controller for Wearable Robots: Application to an Upper Limb Exoskeleton

This paper introduces an adaptive integral sliding mode controller for exoskeletons. The controller design is based on the hypothesis that only classical properties are known such as parameters' bounds, and all other functions are unknown. To ensure the convergence in position, velocity and acceleration for desired trajectories, disturbances are supposed to be bounded. The closed-loop stability of the system in the sense of Lyapunov is demonstrated. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is proved in real time using a 2-DOF upper limb exoskeleton in the rehabilitation context taking into account the security and the safety of the user.