Sliding Mode Control for Nonlinear Manipulator Systems

A sliding mode control is developed for nonlinear manipulator systems. An improved version of the exponential reaching law is presented to ensure the states converge to the sliding surface in finite time. In the presence of system uncertainty and external disturbances, the system states converge to a small region centered at the origin within a finite time and thereafter will asymptotically converge to the equilibrium point. The robustness and convergence properties of the proposed approach are demonstrated from both the theoretical point of view and also using simulation studies.