A New Architecture for Set-Point Control of Robotic Manipulators With Time-Varying Input/Output Delays

In this paper we study the classical set-point control problem for rigid robots when there are time-varying delays in the input-output channels. It has been demonstrated earlier that scattering variables together with additional gains can be utilized to stabilize the closed loop system in the presence of time-varying delays. However, this architecture is not able to guarantee asymptotic regulation to the desired configuration, and the stability depends on the maximum rate of change of the time-varying delays in the communication. Hence, in this paper, we present a new architecture where scattering variables and position feedback are utilized to guarantee stability and asymptotic convergence of the regulation error to the origin while simultaneously relaxing a significant assumption on the rate of change of delays. The proposed algorithm is numerically verified on a two-degree-of-freedom manipulator.