Chattering-Free Neuro-Sliding Mode Control of 2-DOF Planar Parallel Manipulators

This paper proposes a novel chattering free neuro‐sliding mode controller for the trajectory tracking control of two degrees of freedom (DOF) parallel manipulators which have a complicated dynamic model, including modelling uncertainties, frictional uncertainties and external disturbances. A feedforward neural network (NN) is combined with an error estimator to completely compensate the large nonlinear uncertainties and external disturbances of the parallel manipulators. The online weight tuning algorithms of the NN and the structure of the error estimator are derived with the strict theoretical stability proof of the Lyapunov theorem. The upper bound of uncertainties and the upper bound of the approximation errors are not required to be known in advance in order to guarantee the stability of the closed‐loop system. The example simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy for the tracking control of a 2‐DOF parallel manipulator. It results in its being chattering‐free, very small tracking errors and its robustness against uncertainties and external disturbances.