A Stability Analysis for the Acceleration-Based Robust Position Control of Robot Manipulators via Disturbance Observer

This paper proposes a new nonlinear stability analysis for the acceleration-based robust position control of robot manipulators by using disturbance observer (DOb). It is shown that if the nominal inertia matrix is properly tuned in the design of a DOb, then the position error asymptotically goes to zero in regulation control and is uniformly ultimately bounded in trajectory-tracking control. As the bandwidth of a DOb and the nominal inertia matrix are increased, the bound of error shrinks, i.e., the robust stability and performance of the position control system are improved. However, neither the bandwidth of the DOb nor the nominal inertia matrix can be freely increased due to practical design constraints, e.g., the robust position controller becomes more noise-sensitive when they are increased. The proposed stability analysis provides insights into the dynamic behavior of DOb-based robust motion control systems. It is theoretically and experimentally proved that nondiagonal elements of the nominal inertia matrix are useful in improving the stability and in adjusting the tradeoff between robustness and noise sensitivity. The validity of the proposal is verified by simulation and experimental results.