Robust and Optimal Tracking Control for Manipulator Arm Driven by Pneumatic Muscle Actuators

In this paper, a robust and optimal control problemfor uncertain bilinear systems is formulated via a guaranteed costapproach and then applied to tracking control design of arobotic arm actuated by Pneumatic Artificial Muscles (PAMs).Taking into account the nonlinear dynamics of the pneumaticactuators, the tracking error dynamics has been described as anuncertain bilinear systems, whereas unknown perturbations onrobot dynamics and modelling mismatch are regarded as an externaldisturbance to be attenuated. Some numerical simulationsare also given to demonstrate both robustness and optimality ofthe control performance in tracking desired trajectories with therequired accuracy.