IJCAS

This paper expresses a novel adaptive fault-tolerant control (FTC) method for a robotic manipulator with dead zones and actuator faults in the task space. To specify, the actuator faults are the partial loss of effectiveness of actuators. The partial loss of effectiveness and the break-points of dead zone are estimated by the novel adaptive laws. Establishing an anti-singularity terminal sliding surface ensures the finite time convergence of the tracking errors to zero. The correctness of this method is proved by the Lyapunov criterion. Despite the fact that the proposed adaptive FTC method belongs to the passive group, it does not require any robust component which makes largemagnitude chattering phenomena to deal with the actuator faults. Instead, they are handled by a unique technique. The comparative simulation results illustrate the merit and efficiency of the proposed method.

Keywords: Dead zone, fault-tolerant control, finite time stable, partial loss of effectiveness, saturation.