Sliding mode control of rigid-link anthropomorphic robotic arm

Increasing demands of accuracy, productivity, reliability and repeatability in today's robotic applications have highlighted significance of modern control techniques. The associated control law must be able to handle perturbation forces, joint friction and parameter variations which can degrade the robot performance. This paper proposes non-linear Sliding Mode Control (SMC) for a 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) human arm like robotic manipulator AUTonomous Articulated Robotic Educational Platform (AUTAREP). The proposed control algorithm is compared with a trivial linear control strategy Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID). Simulation results depicted the efficiency of SMC over PID in term of tracking response for various desired trajectories.