On Tracking Control of Rigid and Flexible Joint Robots

We address the problem of (semiglobal) trajectory tracking control of rigid and exible joints robots using computed torque based controllers. The paper contains two contributions; rst, for rigid robots we show that velocity in the control algorithm can be replaced by the ltered position, thus obviating the explicit need of state observers. Second, we show that it is posible to achieve trajectory tracking of exible joints robots without calculating link jerk. Removing the need of observers and the determination of link jerk reduces the controller complexity and enhances its robustness vis a vis parameter uncertainty and unmodeled dynamics.