Adaptive Tracking Control with Uncertainty-Aware and State-Dependent Feedback Action Blending for Robot Manipulators

Adaptive control can significantly improve tracking performance of robot manipulators subject to modeling errors in dynamics. In this letter, we propose a new framework combining the composite adaptive controller using a natural adaptation law and an extension of the adaptive variance algorithm (AVA) for controller blending. The proposed approach not only automati- cally adjusts the feedback action to reduce the risk of violating actuator constraints but also anticipates substantial modeling errors by means of an uncertainty measure, thus preventing severe performance deterioration. A formal stability analysis of the closed-loop system is conducted. The control scheme is experimentally validated and directly compared with baseline methods on a torque-controlled KUKA LWR IV+.