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Article

Validation of a Classical Sliding Mode Control Applied to a

Physical Robotic Arm with Six Degrees of Freedom
Andres González-Rodríguez, Rogelio E. Baray-Arana *, Abraham Efraím Rodríguez-Mata, Isidro Robledo-Vega and Pedro Rafael Acosta
Cano de los Ríos

Tecnólógico Nacional de México, IT de Chihuahua, Ave. Tecnólógico #2909, Chihuahua 31310, Mexico *
Correspondence: [email protected]

Abstract: The control of robotic manipulators has become increasingly difficult over recent years
due to their high accuracy, performance, speed, and reliability in a variety of applications, such as
industry, medicine, research, etc. These serial manipulator systems are extremely complex
because their dynamic models include perturbations, parametric variations, coupled nonlinear
dynamics, and non-modular dynamics, all of which require robust control for trajectory tracking.
This paper compares two control techniques: computational torque control (CTC) and sliding
mode control (SMC). In this study, the latter was used for a physical robotic arm with six degrees
of freedom (DOF) and online experiments were conducted, which has received little attention in
the literature. As a result, the contribution of this work was based on the real-time application of
this controller via a self-developing interface. The great resilience of sliding mode controllers to
disturbances was also demonstrated in this study.

Citation: González-Rodríguez, A.;

Keywords: sliding mode control; six degrees of freedom; manipulator; real-time applications
Baray-Arana, RE; Rodríguez-Mata, A.E.;
Robledo-Vega, I.; Acosta Cano
de los Ríos, PR Validation of a

Classical Sliding Mode Control

1. Introduction
Applied to a Physical Robotic Arm with
Six Degrees of Freedom. Serial manipulators can perform complex tasks that human beings cannot perform
Processes 2022, 10, 2699. https:// because they could be harmed or because they do not have the precision or force, or
doi.org/10.3390/pr10122699 ei-ther, that are required to perform those tasks. However, to fully fulfill this ability, serial
Academic Editors: Francisco Ronay
manipulators require robust control. Thus, the design of manipulators needs to consider
Lopez-Estrada and Guillermo
nonlinear dynamical models, parameter uncertainties, perturbations, and non-model
Valencia-Palomo dynamics . PID and PD controllers are some of the most widely applied control schemes
for robot manipulators due to the simplicity of their implementation. However, these
Received: 19 March 2022
types of controllers have some drawbacks. A PD controller needs a gravitational term
Accepted: 24 April 2022
in the control law for nonplanar manipulators [1]. Meanwhile, a PID controller requires
Published: 14 December 2022
a tuning procedure to allow good performance [2]. These controllers also lack precision
Publisher's Note: MDPI stays neutral for non-modeled dynamics, such as friction or unknown external torques. Finally, they
with regard to jurisdictional claims in can only be used to track set points [3].
published maps and institutional affairs- Trajectory tracking and motion control refer to when a manipulator follows a proposed
iations. path, which is usually obtained using inverse kinematics. One of the common solutions is
the CTC (which is a feedback linearization method). This method has the disadvantages
of knowing the dynamical model a priori and being not robust. To counter these problems,
control researchers have combined CTC with other techniques, such as adaptive control
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
[4], fuzzy logic [5], and neural networks [6]. Although these methods can estimate the
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
dynamics of the proposed model, they are not robust to perturbations.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and conditions
SMC is a robust control method that has been extensively studied by control re-
conditions of the Creative Commons
searchers and demonstrates skills such as parametric in-variance, dynamic collapse,
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
and asymptotic convergence in the presence of perturbations [7,8]. One way to design
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
an SMC is to use the equivalent control method (ECM) [9]. This method introduces a
4.0/).
known part of the model system into the control law to reduce the chattering phenomena, which

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are a well-known drawback of SMC systems. By doing this, the SMC only deals with the
nonmodeled dynamics and the estimation errors of the parameters [10–12].
In the field of robotics, the known part of an ECM is the dynamic model of a robotic arm
[13]. These dynamic models are complex due to the coupling of the chain of masses and
inertia and the large number of terms that appear for arms with more than three DOFs [14].
For this reason, in the literature, various authors have combined different control techniques
and computer algorithms to estimate the known part of the ECM. In [15], Bailey and
Arapostathis used a classical SMC surface with the known part of the ECM in a 2DOF
manipulator. Kumar and Prasad [16–18] compared the use of CTC and SMC to the known
part of the ECM, which shows the advantage of using SMC over the ECM in a 3DOF
manipulator. The paper [19] proposed a novel sliding mode control (NSMC) that was based
on an extended gray wolf optimizer (EGWO). The NSMC employed a PD surface with an
exponential term that was combined with the ECM in a 2DOF manipulator and surface gains
were selected using the EGWO. However, as in CTC, it is necessary to know the dynamic
model in the ECM. In [20], Thuan et al. combined intelligent control with second-order sliding
mode control (SOSMC). A radial basis function network (RBFN) calculates the dynamic model
and nonmodeled dynamics of a 4DOF dual arm (DAM)
(2DOF in each arm). Furthermore, Thuan et al. in [21] used model reference adaptive
control (MRAC) instead of RBFN with SOSMC for the same DAM. An optimal sliding
mode control approach, which was used in [22], combines optimal control with SMC for
optimal robustness properties. In this approach, an observer of the disturbance was in
charge of the adaptive part of the control and applied this control to the 2DOF planar manipulator.
There are two main problems with the techniques that were presented in [9–14].
One is that SMC is a simple control law that depends only on the selection of a gain and a
surface, which, in turn, depends on the state of the system [23]. The use of this technique
makes the control law and its application more difficult. Second, they only simulate the control
strategy. For implementation, ref. [24] proposed an SMC with a sliding perturbation observer
(SPO). The SPO estimates the reaction force of a 6DOF DAM (3DOFs in each arm). Jeong
et al. [25] applied a super-twisting algorithm (STA) with an adaptive law to an industrial 4DOF
robot using only 2DOF and an XY planar manipulator.
Paper [26] presented an adaptive sliding mode neural network control (ASMNN). This
control approach couples the SMC with a radial basis function neural network (RBFNN),
which was implemented in a three-link robot manipulator (3DOF). Similarly, ref. [27] used
the same control strategy for the same manipulator, taking into account the dead zone.
Control techniques for other types of system can also be found in the literature. In
[28], an NN in combination with a fractional order SMC was used to control an active
power filter. The NN was in charge of the estimation of the uncertainties and nonlinearities,
while the fractional order SMC improved the precision and performance of the control.
The controller was implemented in real time and produced excellent results.
Ref. [29] combined a pole placement control, time delay estimation (TDE), and
adaptive sliding mode control. The authors implemented the controller with a 6DOF
Mitsubishi robot that used only 2DOF. To increase robustness in the reaching phase of
the SMC, article [30] proposed an adaptive integral sliding mode control (AISMC) with a
TDE, which was implemented with 3DOF of a 6DOF PUMA robot. The articles [15–20]
only implement controllers with a few DOFs of the manipulator. Hee et al. in [31]
implement a PID controller for the gravitational term of a physical 7DOF DAM. An SPO
was used to estimate the evaluation force of the manipulator. However, as mentioned
above, the PID controller could not be used for trajectory tracking.
The literature has proposed a variety of control techniques. Most of them involve the
simulation of the controllers. For the implemented controllers, the majority used fewer DOFs
than were available in the corresponding system. One example was an implementation of a
7DOF controller, but only for set-point tracking. Another point to address is the gain selection
of the sliding-mode control. For a robot driven by DC motors, the limit gain is the maximum
voltage in the power converter. When the controller needs
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more energy, the robot cannot reach or stay on the surface. The main focus of this paper
was to find the voltage (SMC gain) that is needed for trajectory tracking. The novelty of
this paper is the procedure that was used to validate the SMC gain in an n-DOF
manipulator driven by DC motors. To the authors' knowledge, there has not yet been a
discussion regarding the verification of the above.
In [32], a suggested strategy was compared to achieve finite-time convergence,
flicker- free control input, superior tracking performance, and resilience of the robotic manipulator.
The difficulty of this type of method is implementation in real time, as in this project, since
the programming of fractional control algorithms is quite complex to carry out in an
embedded way. In [33], an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system with 6 degrees of
freedom (6DOF) and external disturbances that corresponded to sensor failure was
discussed. This form of pure SMC controller is still employed in robotics, and we utilize it
in this paper to control the manipulator robot in a robust trajectory, following our proposed
work. Using Lyapunov's theory, see Ref. [34] shown that a well-designed control could
ensure that transnational and rotational tracking errors converge at the origin in a finite
amount of time. However, only numerical simulations were carried out to demonstrate
that the developed control scheme had a high level of robustness and a quick
convergence time and demonstrated elimination of entry saturation and suppression of
chattering. In this study, we propose the use of real-time control through an SMC.
In this paper, a classical SMC deals with the nonmodeled dynamics for the error
estimation of the parameters and perturbations of a 6DOF manipulator that was driven
by DC motors. The dynamical model was not applied to the control law (the known part
of the ECM), which made the control law of the SMC simpler. When the numerical
simulations were compared to those of CTC and SMC, SMC showed better robustness
with easy implementation. The SMC experiments were performed using self-developed
hardware that sent and received data between MATLAB and the robot. SMC gain was
validated using Lyapunov stability analysis and actuator dynamics.
The paper is organized as follows. The mathematical model of the actuator manip-
ulator is presented in Section 2. Section 3 deals with the CTC and the SMC. Numerical
simulations of the CTC and SMC are presented in Section 4. Section 5 details the experi-
mental results of the obtained SMC gain. Finally, Section 6 discusses the conclusions
and areas for further development.

2. Mathematical Problem and Model

In this section, we introduce the mathematical model that was used to construct the robust
control that was based on sliding modes. We rely on the most popular mathematical models from
the literature, since this type of dynamic modeling is still used for the design of automatic control
technology [11]. Therefore, the classical dynamic model of an n-DOF manipulator is expressed
as follows.

D(q(t))¨q(t) + C(q(t), ÿq(t))ÿq(t) + g(q(t)) = u(t) (1)

The inertia, Coriolis, and centrifugal matrices and the gravity vector are given by D(q), C(q,
ÿq), and g, respectively, and u(t) are the control inputs of the system. By representing (1) as a
separation of equations for each DOF, it yields the following.
n n
ÿ ÿ cijk(q)qÿ
dkj(q)q¨ iqÿ
+ j + gk (q) = uk (2)
j=1 i,j

where k is the DOF of the manipulator.

Much of the previous research has focused on electrical positions, which was helpful
as it allowed us to model more accurately and helped us develop our controller. The
control input of the dynamic Equation (1) is the torque that was produced by the actuators
in each DOF. In this case, the manipulator was driven by DC motors. The system is the
input for the voltage in the motor terminals. For this reason, we could obtain the input of
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the model in voltage terms by combining the dynamical models of the manipulator and
the actuators. The linear model of a DC motor was given by:

dia(t) dÿ(t) va(t) = La

+ Raia(t) + Ke dt
dt ÿ(t) dÿ(t)
(3)
d2
Kt ia(t) = J + B + nÿ(t) dt 2 dt

where the inductance La, electrical resistance Ra, and electrical constant Ke are the electrical
parameters and the rotor inertia J, viscous friction B, and mechanical constant Kt are the mechanical
parameters. The current and voltage are va = va(t) and ia = ia(t), the motor shaft angular displacement
is ÿ = ÿ(t) , n is the transmission ratio, and ÿ = ÿ(t) is the toque load, which is also known as the
disturbance.
When we coupled Equations (1) and (3), there were three state variables (angular
position, angular velocity, and current). In the literature, we found that Equation (3)
could be reduced to one state variable. To achieve this, we compared the magnitude of
the electrical time constant (ETC) with the mechanical time constant (MTC) by defining these
constants as:
La
ETC = Go out

MTC = J
B
For the manipulator used in this article, the MTC was 168 times higher than the ETC in the arm
motor and 40 times higher in the wrist motors. Dividing Equation (3) by Ra, ie, La/Ra = 0, and writing
Equation (3) according to its components yield:

KekKtk Ktk
Jk ¨ÿk + (B + ) ÿÿk = vak ÿ nkÿk (4)
Rak Rak

By dividing Equation (4) by nk and expressing B = (KekKtk/Rak), we obtained:

B Ktk
Jk ¨ÿk + ÿÿk = vak ÿ ÿk (5)
nk nk Raknk

where ÿk is the angular displacement that the motor saw. When we wanted to combine (5) and (2), ÿk was necessary in
qk
terms of the manipulator. By substituting ÿk = into Equation (5), it yields: nk

B Ktk
Jk q¨k + qÿk = vak ÿ ÿk (6)
2 2 Raknk
nk nk

When comparing Equation (2) with (6), the control input of (2) is the load torque of (6). By
combining these equations, we obtain a model for the manipulator that was driven by a DC motor,
which was presented as follows:

n n B
Jk Ktk
ÿ ÿ cijk(q)qÿ
dkj(q)q¨ +iqÿ j + q¨k + qÿk + gk (q) = vak
2 2 Raknk
nk j=1 i,j nk

or as matrices:
(D(q) + J)¨q + C(q, ÿq)ÿq + B ÿq + g(q) = u (7)
where

D(q), C(q, ÿq), B, J ÿ Rnxn

q, ÿq, ¨q, g, u ÿ
2 2
Rnx1 where J and B are diagonal matrices with terms Jk/n k and Bk/n k , respectively. The control
input was given by a vector with terms:

Kk
uk = vak (8)
Raknk
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As in the analysis that was performed in [1], we could calculate the voltage input that
was needed for the control.

3. Computed Torque Control and Sliding Mode Control 3.1. CTC

CTC is a feedback linearization technique that uses the dynamic model of a manipula-
tor in the control law. To achieve this, we write Equation (7) as follows:

M(q)q¨ + h(q, qÿ) = u (9)

where
M(q) = (D(q) + J)
h(q, qÿ) = C(q, ÿq)ÿq + B ÿq + g(q)
As M(q) was full-rank and square, its inverse also exists. Thus, we selected a control
law as follows:
u = M(q)v + h(q, qÿ) (10)
where
v = ÿÿq ÿ ÿqÿ + r(t) (11)

where ÿ and ÿ are diagonal matrices and r(t) is the trajectory of each DOF, which was defined as:

r(t) = q¨ d (t) + ÿqÿ d (t) + ÿqd (t) (12)

Equation (11) contains the position (qd (t)), velocity (qÿ d (t)), and acceleration (q¨ d
(t)) of the trajectory that was proposed. Substituting Equation (11) into (10) yields the following:

v = q¨ d (t) + ÿeÿ(t) + ÿe(t) (13)

where e(t) = qd (t) ÿ q is the error of the trajectory tracking.

Applying the control (10) to the dynamic model (9), we obtain the following.

e¨(t) + ÿeÿ(t) + ÿe(t) = 0 (14)

Equation (14) shows a homogeneous second-order linear differential equation. An- other
property demonstrated by Equation (14) was that the set of equations did not lump together. In this
sense, we could treat each differential equation separately. With this in mind, we added a disturbance
to Equation (9) and, using the same control law as (10), we obtained the following:

e¨(t) + ÿeÿ(t) + ÿe(t) = f(t) (15)

where f(t) ÿ Rnx1

As the equations were not lumped, we could use one equation for the Lyapunov stability
analysis. To do this, we passed the first equation into state-space. By selecting x1(t) = e1(t)
and x2(t) = xÿ1(t) = eÿ1(t), we wrote the state-space equation as:

xÿ1(t) = x2(t)
(16)
xÿ2(t) = ÿÿ11x2(t) ÿ ÿ11x1(t) + f1(t)

Then, using the following Lyapunov candidate function:

12 12x
V = ÿ11x 1 2 (t) + 22 (t) (17)

taking the time derivative of the Lyapuniov function, it yield:

Vÿ = ÿV ÿV x1(t)
ÿx1 ÿx2
(18)
x2(t)
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2
Vÿ = ÿÿ11x 2 (t) + x2 f1(t) (19)

The function presented in Equation (19) was not definitely negative because we could not
use a static negative sign in the term x2 f1(t). When we did not take the disturbance into account,
Equation (19) became:
2
Vÿ = ÿÿ11x2(t) (20)

The above derivative was always negative, but only in the state x2(t). To prove total stability,
we use La Salle's theorem with Vÿ = 0:
2
0 = ÿÿ11x 2 (t) (21)

This meant that x2(t) = 0. Thus, its derivative is also equaled zero: xÿ2(t) = 0. Substitut-
ing x2(t) and xÿ2(t) into the state-space Equation (16) yields the following result:

xÿ1(t) =
(22)
0 0 = ÿÿ11x1(t)

where x1(t) = 0. In this manner, we show that both states become zero when following the
desired trajectory with no disturbances in the system.
Numerical simulations are addressed in Section 4, which describes the control with and without
disturbances.

3.2. SMC
We have seen that CTC reduced the dynamic model of the manipulator to a set of
homogeneous second-order differential equations that were not lumped. However, to
achieve this, the robot parameters need to be fully known. Sometimes the parameters
are not available or the system has disturbances in one or various DOFs, which affects
the performance of CTC in trajectory tracking.
To deal with the problems mentioned above, SMC is a highly robust control that has been achieved
discussed in the literature. To apply this control scheme, we select a surface as follows:

s = eÿ(t) + ce(t) (23)

where vector s contains all of the sliding surfaces in each DOF and c is a diagonal matrix with the
constant ck .
Using the following Lyapunov candidate function:

1 T
V = ss 2 (24)

we rewrite Equation (9) as follows, including a distrubance f(t):

ÿ1
¨q = M(q) (u ÿ h(q, ÿq) + f(t)) (25)

The time derivative of the Lyapunov function was given by:

Vÿ = sT ÿs (26)

Substituting the time derivative of s into (26) yield:

Vÿ = sT ÿs
T ÿ1
=s [¨qd (t) ÿ M(q) (u ÿ h(q, ÿq) + f(t)) + c ÿe(t)] (27)
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Applying the control u = ÿosign(s), where ÿo is a diagonal matrix of gains ÿok, and
substituting the control into (27) produced:

Vÿ = sT ÿs
ÿ1
T=s [¨qd (t) + c ÿe(t) + M(q) (h(q, ÿq) + f(t))]
ÿ1
ÿ s TM(q) sign(s) (28)

hence:
T T
abs(s ) = s sign(s) (29)
with:
T T
abs(s ) = [|s1||s2| . . . |sn|] (30)
and:
abs(f(t)) < L (31)

Equation (29) states that each fi(t) had an upper bound constant of Li . By combining
Equations (29)–(31) into (28), we obtain the following inequality:
T ÿ1
Vÿ ÿ abs(s )[abs(¨qd (t) + c ÿe(t) + M(q) (h(q, ÿq) + L)
ÿ1
ÿ M(q) ÿ0] < 0 (32)

Equation (32) was definitely negative when the following was always true:

ÿ0 > abs[M(q)(¨qd (t) + c ÿe(t)) + (h(q, ÿq) + L)] (33)

In other words, when all the gains along the diagonal of the matrix ÿ0 fulfilled the inequality, the system
reached the surface and stayed there for the entire period of time t. As with CTC, the simulations are addressed in
Section 4 to validate the robustness of the SMC.

4. Numerical Simulations of CTC and SMC

We showed in the previous section that we considered two types of control scheme
(CTC and SMC). We showed via Lyapunov stability analysis that CTC was not robust
against disturbances and that the dynamic model had to be completely known in order
to achieve good performance. Meanwhile, the SMC can handle trajectory tracking without
knowing the dynamic model in the control law. In addition to this, the SMC was robust
against disturbances in the system.
This section presents the numerical simulations of the two control laws to improve
understand their behaviour. The actuator parameters are shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Actuator parameters.

Parameters Actuators at the Arm Actuators at the Wrist

Out(ÿ) 5.54 5.3

La(µH) ) 821 1052
Nm 0.0208 0.00363
Kt( A
vs 0.02076 0.00363
Ke( rad )
J(grcm2 ) 19.4 0.0621
B(mNmms) 0.875 0.7971

The parameters and a diagram of the manipulator are shown in Table 2 and Figure 1,
respectively. The procedure that was used to obtain the dynamic model of the manipulator
can be seen in [14].
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l3 l4 l6

a2 l7

a1

l1

Figure 1. Diagram of the 6DOF manipulator.

Table 2. Manipulator parameters.

First Articulation Second Articulation Third Articulation

a1 = 6 cm l3 = 23 cm a1 = 6 cm
ac1 = 3.036 cm lc3 = 10.513 cm ac1 = 3.036 cm
m1 = 0.11 kg m2 = 0.2125 kg ms = 0.5574 kg
Izz1 = 2.6 × 10ÿ6 kgm2 Ixx2 = 9.2 × 10ÿ4 kgm2 Ixxs = 2.922 × 10ÿ6 kgm2
Iyy2 = 2.0515 × 10ÿ3 kgm2 Iyys = 2.922 × 10ÿ6 kgm2
Izz2 = 2.9224 × 10ÿ3 kgm2 Izzs = 5.615 × 10ÿ6 kgm2
l4 = 24 cm
lc4 = 4.310 cm
m3 = 0.215 kg
Ixx3 = 1.9229 × 10ÿ5 kgm2
1 Iyy3 = 2.1720 × 10ÿ4 kgm2
Izz3 = 2.3177 × 10ÿ4 kgm2
Fourth Articulation Fifth Articulation Sixth Articulation

a2 = 10 cm l6 = 4 cm l7 = 10 cm
ac2 = 5 cm lc6 = 2 cm lc7 = 5 cm
m4 = 0.0803 kg m5 = 0.1412 kg m5 = 0.0712 kg
Ixx4 = 4.7373 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Ixx5 = 2.6153 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Ixx6 = 7.3043 × 10ÿ5 kgm2
Iyy4 = 1.8376 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Iyy5 = 3.9774 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Iyy6 = 7.4434 × 10ÿ5 kgm2
Izz4 = 4.7373 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Izz5 = 4.1205 × 10ÿ5 kgm2 Izz6 = 6.86 × 10ÿ6 kgm2

For trajectory tracking, a Linear Segment Parabola Blending (LSPB) was used. This
function was defined as follows:

ÿ a2t
q0 + 2 0 < t ÿ tb
q f +q0+vtf
qd =
ÿÿÿ
+ vt tb < t ÿ tf ÿ tb (34)
2 at2 t
f a t2
ÿÿÿ qfÿ 2 + atf t ÿ 2 tf ÿ tb < t ÿ tf

where qd is the trajectory LSPB, q0 and q f are the initial and final values of the trajectory,
tb and tf are the mixing and final times, and v and a are the velocity and acceleration of
and
the trajectory, respectively. We could compute v and a using the values of q0, q f , tf , 3 tf . The LSPB trajectory with tf
1
tb = = 4, q0 = 0, and q f = ÿ is shown in Figure 2. In both
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the CTC and STM control simulations, a step perturbation and an LSPB trajectory were
used. used. The tf of each DOF was 4 s and the final degree of each DOF was:

ÿ
2
ÿ ÿ ÿ
ÿ

ÿ
3 ÿ

ÿÿ
3
ÿ ÿ

ÿ ÿ

qf = ÿ
4
ÿ ÿ

ÿ ÿ

ÿ
3
ÿ ÿÿ ÿ
6

For CTC, a simulation without perturbations is shown in Figure 3 and a simulation

with perturbations is shown in Figure 4.

Position of LSPB Velocity of LSPB

3
1

2
qd

0.5
1

0
0
0 1 2 3 t(sec) 4 5 0 1 2 3 t(sec) 4 5

Acceleration of LSPB

0.5

0
a

-0.5

-1

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

t(sec)

Figure 2. LSPB trajectory.

Figure 3. CTC numerical simulation with no disturbances.

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Figure 4. Numerical simulation of CTC with perturbations.

Each DOF on the manipulator followed the desired trajectory when there were no
perturbations, as shown in Figure 3, but the robot lost the trajectory when we applied a
perturbation in each DOF. As we shown in Section 3, the Lyapunov function could not
have a definite sign when a perturbation was applied to the CTC, so there was no guarantee
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that stability exists. This can be seen in Figure 4. The SMC and its control are shown in
Figures 5 and 6, respectively.

Figure 5. Simulation of the SMC with perturbations using numerical methods.

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Figure 6. Simulation of the signal regulation of the SMC with perturbations using numerical methods.

Three different techniques to measure error (ITAE, IAE and ISE) in trajectory tracking
were used to compare the two controllers with perturbations, which can be seen in Figure 7.
First Articulation ITAE First Articulation IAE First Articulation ISE
#10-3
0.25 0.1 3.5

0.2 3
0.08
2.5
0.15
0.06
2
0.1
Error

Error

Error

1.5
0.04
0.05
1
0.02
0 CTC CTC 0.5 CTC
SMC SMC SMC
-0.05 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
t(sec) t(sec) t(sec)

Second Articulation ITAE Second Articulation IAE Second Articulation ISE

1.4 0.5 0.1

1.2
0.4 0.08
1

0.3 0.06
0.8
Error

Error

Error

0.6
0.2 0.04

0.4
0.1 0.02
0.2 CTC CTC CTC
SMC SMC SMC
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
t(sec) t(sec) t(sec)

Third Articulation ITAE Third Articulation IAE Third Articulation ISE

0.8 0.3 0.035

0.25 0.03
0.6
0.025
0.2
0.02
0.4 0.15
Error

Error

Error

0.015
0.1
0.01
0.2
CTC 0.05 CTC 0.005 CTC
SMC SMC SMC
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 t(sec) 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2.5 3 3.5 4
2 t(sec) 2 t(sec)

Figure 7. Cont.
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Fourth Articulation ITAE Fourth Articulation IAE Fourth Articulation ISE

12 4 7

10 6
3
5
8
4
6 2
Error

Error

Error
3
4
2
1
2 CTC CTC 1 CTC
SMC SMC SMC
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
t(sec) t(sec) t(sec)

Fifth Articulation ITAE Fifth Articulation IAE Fifth Articulation ISE

1.4 0.7 0.2

1.2 0.6
0.15
1 0.5

0.8 0.4
0.1
Error

Error

Error
0.6 0.3

0.4 0.2
0.05
0.2 CTC 0.1 CTC CTC
SMC SMC SMC
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
t(sec) t(sec) t(sec)

Sixth Articulation ITAE Sixth Articulation IAE Sixth Articulation ISE

200 80 2000

150 60 1500

100 40 1000
Error

Error

Error
50 20 500
CTC CTC CTC
SMC SMC SMC
0 0 0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
t(sec) t(sec) t(sec)

Figure 7. Error performance indexes: ITAE, IAE, and ISE.

It can be seen in Figure 5 that the manipulator followed the trajectory when we had
Sufficient gain in the SMC control, as demonstrated in Section 3, and that the time derivative
of the Lyapunov function was always negative. However, it can be seen in Figure 6 that
the effect of using a discontinuous controller causes the applied torque to oscillate within
the manipulator.
The comparison between the SMC and CTC with perturbation can be seen in Figure 7.
This comparison demonstrates the robustness of the SMC against perturbations. The
CTC had a visible and high magnitude of error, but the SMC error was not visible. In the
following section, an SMC was applied to a 6DOF manipulator using a self-developed
electronic interface (SDEI) in MATLAB. The advantages and disadvantages of the proposed
control scheme are also discussed.

5. Implementation and Experimental Results

As we shown in Section 4, SMC offered a simpler control law compared to CTC,
which only needs to know the gain of the sign function. The numerical simulations shown
that the SMC achieved asymptotic stability in the presence of perturbations. For these
reasons, SMC was selected for the trajectory tracking of a 6DOF manipulator driven by DC
motors. The manipulator was located at the “Laboratorio de Control de Electromecanismos”
at the “Tecnológico de Chihuahua”. The SDEI manipulator is shown in Figure 8.
To apply the SMC, we had to understand the control law in terms of the software and
hardware that was being used. As the dynamic model of the manipulator with actuators
had a voltage input, the sign function changed the polarity of the voltage in the DC motor. A
H-bridge was in charge of this. Additionally, the voltage in the H bridge (power converter)
was the gain in sliding mode. The H bridge that was selected for this study was an L298
motor drive, which could handle two DC motors simultaneously. Two systems were used
for the experiment: the control system and the power system. The control system had the
following main elements, each with its own communication protocols:
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• SDEI (UART-SPI); 4
• PIC18F26K20; •
FTDI FT232RL (USB-UART).

Figure 8. The 6DOF manipulator with SDEI.

The control system starts in the computer, which contains the control algorithm within the
MATLAB environment. MATLAB sends the information via a virtual serial port to the FTDI (USB),
then the SDEI sends the information to the SEDI via the UART protocol.
SEDI had four PIC18F26K20s, one of which was the master that received the data from FTDI
and sent them to slaves via SPI. The slaves were in charge of generating the PWM that was
needed for the power system and reading the position sensors of the serial manipulator.
The slaves sent the data positions to the master and, using the same sequence as before, the
data reached MATLAB. MATLAB compute the control law with the information obtained and send
it to the FTDI; then, the process was repeated again. It took 5 milli-seconds for the SDEI to
complete the cycle, which was the sample time of the system. Diagrams of the experimental setup
and the SDEI configuration are shown in Figure 9.

Power Supply
SDEI
Computer FTDI SDEI
Virtual Control
Serial Port UART Signal
System
Power

SDEI

Master
Sensors
Position

Power

Signal
SPI

l3 l4 l6

a2 l7

a1
SPI

l1

Robot Arm
SPI

Slaves

Figure 9. SDEI diagram.

The power system was responsible for supplying the voltage to the SDEI, the H bridge,
1

and the power converters. The elements of the power system are the following: • Power
supply (12 Volts); • Four H-
bridges; • DC–DC
converter (12 Volts ÿ 5 Volts); • DC–DC
converter (12 Volts ÿ 3.3 Volts).
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The DC–DC converters were connected to the power supply of 12 Volts. One of them reduces the voltage to 3.3 V
to power the SDEI. The other reduces the voltage to 5 V to power the 2 H-bridges. The 2 H bridges with 5 V are connected
to wrist motors, while the other 2 H bridges are connected to the power supply (12 V). These H-bridges are in charge of
the power of the arm motors. A diagram of the power system is presented in Figure 10.

DC-DC
DC-DC
5V
3.3V
Power Supply SDEI

12V

bridge
H-
H-bridge Arm Motors

Wrist Motors
Power System

Figure 10. The power system.

With SDEI, communication was achieved between MATLAB and the manipulator.
The control algorithm (SMC) and its reference, the LSPB trajectory in this case, were programmed in MATLAB. Figure 11
shows the control diagram.

Figure 11. The control diagram.

The physical arm only communicates with the position sensor, which meant that we could only measure the position
error, but we needed both the position and velocity errors for the sliding surface. Due to this, a backward Euler method
was used as a differentiator to estimate the velocity error. To accomplish this, we use the following.

de(t) e(t) ÿ e(t ÿ ÿt) ÿt

eÿ = = lim ÿtÿ0 (35)
dt

where ÿt is the sample time and e(t ÿ ÿt) is the previous error value. As the control was implemented in a digital environment,
the limit of (35) could not reach zero and (35) was approximated in the following way:

e(t) ÿ e(t ÿ ÿt) eÿ ÿ ÿt

(36)

In other words, when the sample time was shorter, Equation (36) obtained a better approximation of Equation (35).
We needed to know whether the voltage in each DC motor could follow the desired trajectory. As mentioned above, these
voltages were the sliding mode increases in voltage terms. Using a numerical simulation, we graphed Equation (33) and
the maximum of this graph was the torque required to reach the surface and stay there for the entire period of time. Since
we did not know how much torque was needed, the simulation started with a gain of 5 nm for the arm motors and 1 nm for
the wrist motors. For the physical experiment, each DOF followed an LSPB. The final times of the LSPB were tf = 10 12 9
6 8 7 and the final degrees of the LSPB are qf =

ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ ÿ
ÿ
3 2 4 3 2 . Figures 12–14 present these results.
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It can be seen in Figure 12 that the manipulator followed the desired trajectory, which meant that the correct
gains were used. To obtain the minimum required gain, we calculated the maximum of each torque (L1 to L6)
using the Lyapunov analysis shown in Figure 14 and converted it into voltage using Equation (8). With these taken
into account, the maximum torques ÿ0, the minimum required voltages V0, and the voltage in each motor Vm are
shown in Table 3.

Figure 12. Trajectory tracking simulation of the applied SMC.

Figure 13. Input signal control.

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Figure 14. The signal of the Lyapunov analysis.

Table 3. Comparison between the voltage that was needed to follow the trajectory and the voltage of
the electronic interface.

DOF ÿ0 (nm) V0 (Volts) Vm (Volts)

1 0.0060 0.2665 12
2 2.2668 11.6858 12
3 0.7644 10.1807 12
4 0.0652 4.1253 5
5 0.0182 1.1529 5
6 3.71 × 10ÿ6 2.35 × 10ÿ3 5

When we compared the voltage in each motor Vm to the minimum required voltage
(sliding-mode gain in voltage terms) V0, V0 < Vm. Therefore, the voltage in each motor was
sufficient to track the LSPB trajectory. In this manner, the verification of the sliding mode
was completed, and a physical application was performed. Figures 15 and 16 show the
results of the physical implementation. As expected, the gain of the SMC was responsible
for all tracking of the trajectories because the dynamic model of the manipulator (the
known part of the ECM) was not in the control law. The result was a high magnitude
discontinuous control law, as shown in Figure 16, which causes each DOF of the robot arm
to vibrate (chatter) (see Figure 15). As can be seen in Figure 15, the physical arm followed
the proposed trajectory of each DOF, as in the simulation. Thus, the voltage in each motor
was sufficient. According to this result, we could validate the sliding mode gain using
the Lyapunov stability analysis. This solves the problem of using iterative methods in the
design of the sliding gain. A verification of this gain before this application has not been obtained
shown before in the literature. In this sense, the gain could be selected without increasing
the gain in the experiments or simulations. The following advantages of the control strategy
proposed in this paper were:
• The desired trajectory was perfectly followed without knowing the parameters of
the manipulator;
• The SMC was a simple control strategy compared to CTC. The CTC had the dynamic
model of the manipulator in its control law, which makes it a complex law due to
the 6DOF of the robot. For the SMC, we only had to know the sign of the surface,
which did not depend on any parameter or perturbation of the manipulator. Print
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this way, the SMC programming was less complicated and performed better in the software
environment; • The gain
validation of the SMC in this paper could be used as a straightfor- ward developed tuning
procedure. As mentioned above, the main drawback of the well-known PID controller is the
tuning process. This makes the SMC a better option in terms of selecting the gains of the
controllers; • There was no need to
obtain the gain of the sliding mode using iterative methods in
simulations or experiments.
However, even though the classic SMC had some great advantages, the following
disadvantages were seen in the controller strategy when it was implemented:
• As mentioned in the literature, the chattering problem was present in the movement of
the manipulator due to the discontinuous law. This can create fatigue in the
actuators and the mechanical parts of the robot;
• A discontinuous law was implemented, which used all the gain in power of the
electronic interface and developed an inefficient use of energy in the control law.
The most significant result of this paper is the gain validation of the SMC for its application
in the experimental results. Furthermore, Lyapunov analysis was used as a simple tuning method
for the gain of the SMC, which was a great advantage for this type of controller. However, the
chattering phenomenon was present in robotic trajectory tracking.
One of the reasons for the chattering in the manipulator is the numerical differentiator. In all of
the simulations, little chattering was present because the velocity was taken directly from the
model. However, in the implementation, the sample time of the SDEI induce numerical errors in
the sliding surface. For better performance and a reduction in chattering, enhanced sliding mode
controllers or hybrid sliding mode controllers need to be used.
Similarly, when the classical SMC was applied with the numerical differentiator used in this paper,
electronic interfaces with lower sample times had to be used. The approach for advanced
differentiators could also reduce the chattering phenomenon.

Figure 15. Tracking of the physical robot.

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Figure 16. Signal of control applied to the physical manipulator.

6. Conclusions
In this article, the calculation of the SMC gain was performed using Lyapunov
analysis and validated in a real application using a DC motor driven serial manipulator.
The experimental results showed great performance in trajectory tracking with the
selected gain. As we shown in Section 3, the SMC was a simple strategy compared to
CTC, for which the dynamic model needed to be known a priori, and a 6DOF robot was too comp
Furthermore, in the numerical simulations, the CTC was not robust against perturbations
and lost the trajectory. However, the discontinuous control law in the SMC generates
chattering in the manipulator, which could cause damage to the actuators and mechanical
parts. For this reason, in the future advanced SMC strategies that deal with the chattering
problem must be taken into account.

Author Contributions: Conceptualization, IR-V., AG-R. and REB-A.; methodology, AG-R. and
REB-A.; software, AG-R. and REB-A.; validation, AG-R. and REB-A.; formal analysis, AG-R., AER-
M. and REB-A.; investigation, AG-R., AER-M. and REB-A.; writing—original draft preparation, AG-
R., PRACdlR, IR-V. and REB-A.; writing—review and editing, AG-R., PRACdlR, IR-V. and REB-A.;
supervision, AG-R., PRACdlR, IR-V. and REB-A.; project administration, REB-A.; funding
acquisition, REB-A. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding: This project was funded by the project thanks to the “Brazo manipulador con morfología
adaptada a una plataforma muivil robotizada tipo industrial.” TENM key: 6050.17-P.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
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Acknowledgments: The Tecnológico Nacional de México campus Instituto Tecnológico de Chi- huahua is
thanked for the economic funding “Brazo manipulador con morfología adaptada a una
plataforma muivil robotizada tipo industrial.” key: 6050.17-P. This work is grateful to CONACYT for
supporting the first author with a scholarship.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used in this manuscript:

CTC Computed torque control

SMC Sliding mode control
DOF Degrees of freedom
ECM Equivalent control method
NSMC Novel sliding control method
EGWO Extended gray wolf optimizer
SOSMC Second-order sliding mode control
RBFN Radial basis function network
DAM Dual arm
MRAC Model reference adaptive control
SPO Sliding perturbation observer
STA Super-twisting algorithm
ASMNN Adaptive sliding mode neural network control
RBFNN Radial basis function neural network
TDE Time delay estimation
AISMC Adaptive integral sliding mode control
6DOF 6 degrees of freedom
UAV Unmanned aerial vehicle
ETC Electrical time constant
MTC Mechanical time constant
LSPB Linear segment parabola blending
SDEI Self-developed electronic interface

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