Decentralized Trajectory Tracking Control for Modular and Reconfigurable Robots With Torque Sensor: Adaptive Terminal Sliding Control-Based Approach

The main technical challenge in decentralized control of modular and reconfigurable robots (MRRs) with torque sensor is related to the treatment of interconnection term and friction term. This paper proposed a modified adaptive sliding mode decentralized control strategy for trajectory tracking control of the MRRs. The radial basis function (RBF) neural network is used as an effective learning method to approximate the interconnection term and friction term, eliminating the effect of model uncertainty and reducing the controller gain. In addition, in order to provide faster convergence and higher precision control, the terminal sliding mode algorithm is introduced to the controller design. Based on the Lyapunov method, the stability of the MRRs is proved. Finally, experiments are performed to confirm the effectiveness of the method.