Task-space fully distributed tracking control of networked uncertain robotic manipulators without velocity measurements

This paper investigates the task-space synchronised tracking problem of uncertain networked manipulators interconnected on directed graphs, where the dynamic leader is available to only a subset of followers and followers have only local interaction. A fully distributed tracking controller is proposed, which is composed of a distributed desired trajectory estimator, a joint-space velocity observer and an adaptive cooperative control algorithm. Specifically, the proposed controller allows each manipulator to track the dynamic leader solely using local task-space position measurements. Besides, in the presence of both dynamic and kinematic uncertainties, the adaptive cooperative control algorithm indeed improves the system's robustness. Furthermore, it is strictly proved that the proposed control scheme ensures that both task-space position and velocity tracking errors converge to zero as time tends to infinity. In the end, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controller.