This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics.
This is the author's version which has not been fully edited and
content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIE.2023.3290250
TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS
Adaptive Neural Network Force Tracking Control of
Flexible Joint Robot with an Uncertain Environment
Xinbo Yu, Member, IEEE, Sisi Liu, Shuang Zhang, Member, IEEE, Wei He*, Senior Member, IEEE,
Haifeng Huang, Member, IEEE
Abstract—In this paper, a control scheme of the flexible joint
robot contacting with an unknown environment is proposed
to realize force tracking. Tracking performance is ensured by
designing the force-based outer loop and the position-based inner
loop of the controller. The reference trajectory is obtained from
the outer loop based on interaction force error and the estimated
environment stiffness. The inner loop controller of the flexible
joint robot based on the singular perturbation method is designed
to achieve precise position tracking performance, and neural
network is utilized to compensate for uncertainties in robotic
dynamics. The stability of the control system is strictly proven by
the Lyapunov method. The effectiveness of the proposed method
is verified by simulations and experiments on the flexible joint
robot.
Index Terms—Adaptive force tracking control, Flexible joint
robot, Singular perturbation, Neural networks control
I. I NTRODUCTION
With the development of robotics and artificial intelligence
technology [1]–[3], robots have been rapidly developed and
applied in various fields [4]. Due to high efficiency, good
stability and high repeatability accuracy, robots have been
widely used in automobile manufacturing, aerospace, welding,
handling and other industrial fields [5]. To a large extent,
robots have replaced human to complete simple and repetitive,
high-intensity, high-risk tasks. The position-based controllers
are usually used in such works to ensure high-precision
tracking, so robots are required to have high stiffness and
good immunity to interference [6]. Robots are more and more
widely used in physical interaction tasks, such as assembly
and limb rehabilitation [7], [8]. In these scenarios, robots in-
evitably have direct physical interaction with the environment
or human, while traditional robots may be risky because of
their high stiffness and weight.
In order to ensure safety in physical interaction tasks,
robots need to have compliance. Some researchers have done
X. Yu, S. Liu, S. Zhang, W. He and H. Huang are with the School of
Intelligence Science and Technology, Beijing Advanced Innovation Center
for Materials Genome Engineering, University of Science and Technology
Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; the Key Laboratory of Intelligent Bionic
Unmanned Systems, Ministry of Education, University of Science and Tech-
nology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China; Institute of Materials Intelligent
Technology, Liaoning Academy of Materials, Shenyang 110004, China.
This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China under Grant 62225304, 62061160371 and 62003032, in part by the
Beijing Natural Science Foundation under Grant JQ20026, in part by the
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation under Grant 2020TQ0031 and Grant
2021M690358, in part by Scientific and Technological Innovation Foundation
of Shunde Graduate School, USTB under Grant BK21BF003, and in part by
the Fundamental Research Funds for the China Central Universities under
Grant FRF-TP-22-003C2.
The corresponding author is W. He, Email: weihe@ieee.org.
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1
works in robotic mechanical design [9]. In [10], the robot
consisted of flexible joints, which make the robot have passive
compliant. It can improve the security in physical interaction
between human and robot effectively. When joint actuators
are subjected to external shocks, they can rely on physical
flexibility to avoid damage. Despite the fact that there have
been many control algorithms for controlling robots [11]–[13],
there are the difficulty of control design due to the introduction
of springs and dampers in flexible joints. [14], [15] found that
joint flexibility was the major impediment to the development
of high-performance controllers in applications. [16] proposed
a flexible joint model, and since then, a large number of
theoretical and experimental studies have focused on how to
control the flexible joint robot. [17] proposed an adaptive
control law for flexible joints and analyzed the stability of
the controller based on the singular perturbation method. [18]
proposed a feedback linearization method and designed a
sliding mode controller to obtain robust tracking performance.
Based on the backstepping method, an adaptive controller was
designed using neural network, which solved the problem of
linearization of unknown parameters caused by the backstep-
ping method [19]. In addition, there were various methods
for dealing with control issues, such as classical control [20]–
[24], adaptive control [25]–[28], intelligent control [29]–[31]
and other effective control methods [32]–[34].
Due to the passive compliance of the flexible joint, the
interaction force generated when the robot contacts with the
environment could be buffered by its inherent impedance [35].
The introduction of spring and damper has brought flexibility
to the robot, however, the value of the spring and damping
coefficient are fixed, hence the flexibility is limited [36]. The
emergence of active compliance control solved the issue of
passive compliance and has been widely used in human-
robot interaction tasks. [37] introduced the active compliance
control to force signal into control systems, so that the robot
can respond to the change of force in real-time. Impedance
control and hybrid force/position control are typical methods
for achieving force tracking [38]–[40].
[41] proposed a novel hierarchical human-in-the-loop
paradigm and introduces the presented impedance learning
strategy to regulate the impedance model. [42] employed adap-
tive fuzzy neural networks to compensate for the uncertainty
in the robotic system to improve compliance when the robot
collides with a wall. [43] proposed a neural network based
admittance control scheme for robotic manipulators. There are
some works integrating impedance control into force/position
controller. Based on force/position control, [44] proposed a
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content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIE.2023.3290250

TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 2

sensorless control method for light electric ac-tuators, which
enabled the robot to adopt different stiffness when interacting
with objects. [45] proposed a new hybrid force/position control
method based on a fuzzy observer. And the designed system
is consisted of a position observer and a contact force/torque
estimator. [11] provided a parametric representation that al-
lowed the robot to learn compliant manipulation skills based
on motion and force information collected from human.
In this paper, we use impedance control to realize the
force tracking when the flexible joint robot contacts with an
unknown environment. We combine the active compliance
with passive compliance to ensure safety. When the controller
design cannot guarantee safety, the passive flexible joint can
also work. We design an adaptive NN controller based on the
singular perturbation method [46]. Based on these discussions,
we highlight our contributions as follows:
1) A control method for estimating the environment stiff-
ness and implementing force tracking in an unknown
environment is proposed for flexible joint robot;
2) An adaptive controller for the flexible joint robot is pro-
posed, which can achieve good tracking performance. It
can also handle the robotic dynamics with uncertainties
using neural networks;
3) The proposed controller can guarantee the uniform
boundness of the system on an infinite time interval
through the Lyapunov method.
II. P ROBLEM FORMULATION
A. Dynamic Model and Singular Perturbation Control of
Flexible Joints
where q, q̇, q̈ ∈ Rn×1 are the robot joint angle, velocity and
acceleration vectors, respectively. θ ∈ Rn×n is the motor an-
gular displacement vector, τ ∈ Rn×1 is the motor input torque
vector, M (q) ∈ Rn×n represents the rigid link inertia matrix,
C(q, q̇)q̇ ∈ Rn×1 is the Coriolis and centrifugal force vector,
G(q) ∈ Rn×1 is the gravitational force vector, B ∈ Rn×n
represents the motor inertia matrix, and K ∈ Rn×n represents
the joint stiffness matrix.
The original flexible joint model is imperceptible to the
standard form of the singularly perturbed model. We set the
joint position q is the slow variable the joint torque τ is the
fast variable, then we can get the standard singular perturbation
model.
First we analyze the simplified system. Substituting (3) into
(2), the joint torque equation can be obtained as:
BK −1 τ̈m + τm = τ − B q̈ (4)
We introduce small positive parameters ε to make K =
Kε /ε2 , where Kε is a positive definite diagonal matrix, and
ε is a very small constant. Then (4) can be rewritten as:
ε2 B τ̈m + Kε τm = Kε (τ − B q̈) (5)
By setting ε = 0, (5) can be expressed as: τ̄m = τ̄ − J q̄ ¨,
substituting it into (1), the quasi-steady state equation of the
system can be obtained as:
¨ + C(q̄, q̄)
[M (q̄) + B]q̄ ˙ q̄˙ + G(q̄) = τ̄ − τe (6)
Then we analyze the boundary layer ayatem. (1) can be
rewritten as:
q̈ = M (q)−1 [τm − τe − C(q, q̇)q̇ − G(q)] (7)

Substituting (7) into (5), we can obtain:

ε2 τ̈m +Kε (B −1 + M (q)−1 )τm =
Kε B −1 τ + Kε M (q)−1 [τe + C(q, q̇)q̇ + G(q)]
(8)
By setting ε = 0, the quasi-steady state of the joint torque
(8) can be expressed as:
(B −1 + M (q)−1 )τ̄m =
M (q̄)−1 [τ̄e + C(q̄, q̄)
˙ q̄˙ + G(q̄)] + B −1 τs (9)
Fig. 1. Mechanical structure of flexible joint: motor, external load in the τ̄m is a constant in a fast time scale T = t/ε, we substitute
actuator and an elastic element.
τm = τ̄m + η into the fast subsystem (8) to obtain the fast
In order to regulate the interaction force, we establish the time scale:
physical interaction model between the endpoint of the robot d2 (τ̄m + η)
+ Kε [B −1 + M (q)−1 ](τ̄m + η)
and the environment and propose the force control strategy. dT 2
We give the diagram of the flexible joint in Fig. 1 The flexible = B −1 Kε (τf + τs ) + Kε M (q)−1 [τe + C(q, q̇)q̇ + G(q)]
joint robot dynamic model is shown as: (10)
Substituting (9) into (10), the boundary layer system equa-
M (q)q̈ + C(q, q̇)q̇ + G(q) = τm − τe (1) tion can be obtained as:
d2 η
B θ̈ + τm = τ (2) + Kε [B −1 + M (q)−1 ]η = B −1 Kε (τ − τ̄ ) (11)
dv 2
where v = t/ε is the fast time scale and τ − τ̄ is called the
τm = K(θ − q) (3) fast feedback.

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TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 3

B. Force Tracking Impedance Control parameter of environmental stiffness will also have a great
Interaction force is generated when end-effector contacts impact on the control effect. In order to reduce the above
with the environment. As shown in (12) and (13), there is impact, we used the interaction force feedback mechanism.
a certain relationship between the deformation and interaction We introduced the interaction force error and force tracking
force of object and robot, so we can get the desired interaction error into the control loop to modify the desired trajectory after
force by controlling the relative positions. obtaining the reference trajectory by estimation. Furthermore,
the singular perturbation method is used to design the position
fe = Ke (x − xe ) (12) controller of the flexible joint to realize the real-time force
tracking.
−fe = Md (ẍ − x¨d ) + Dd (ẋ − x˙d ) + Kd (x − xd ) (13)
where fe ∈ Rn denotes the interaction force. x, xd ∈ Rn xr x
represent the actual and expected position of the effector re- Reference Controller Robot
Trajectory
spectively. The environment can be regarded as a linear spring ef Force fe
xd
model, and Ke , xe denote environmental stiffness and posi- Sensor

tion. And Md ∈ Rn×n (desired inertia), Dd ∈ Rn×n (desired Reference

Trajectory
Kˆ e
Parameter
Estimator

damping) and Kd ∈ Rn×n (desired stiffness) are diagonal and

fd fe
positive definite.

C. Environmental Stiffness Estimation Fig. 2. The block diagram of force tracking control.

Since the environment is unknown, we need to estimate the

environmental stiffness. We set f0 = −Ke xe in (12) and
A. Adaptive Impedance Control
obtain:
In order to achieve force tracking control, we can get the
fe = Ke (x − xe ) = ϑT ϕ (14) desired interaction force by setting the end position of the
fˆe = K̂e (x − x̂e ) = ϑ̂T ϕ (15) robot, modifying (12):

where ϑ = [Ke , f0 ]T , ϕ = [x, 1]T , ϑ̂ is the estimated value of fd = Ke (xd − xe ) (21)

unknown environmental stiffness ϑ. The force error between where fd is the expected interaction force, xd is the endpoint
estimated value and actual value can be expressed as: of the robot required when the external interaction force is fd .
fˆe − fe = ϑ̃ϕ (16) Because the external environment is always changing, the
position xe is unknown for robot, we can put (12) into (21)
where ϑ̃ = ϑ̂ − ϑ represents the estimation error of ϑ. to get:
It can be seen that this is a linear problem, so we can set a
xd = Ke−1 (fd − fe ) + x (22)
general linear adaption law:
˙ where Ke is also unknown, we use genetic algorithm to
ϑ̂ = −P f˜e (17) estimate.
where we define P as: When the reference trajectory is set to xd , if the endpoint
of robot can accurately track xd , the expected external force
P = Υ[x, 1]T = Υϕ (18) fe can accurately track the expected external force fd . But
where Υ = diag[γii ](i=1,2) is a diagonal matrix. because of the error caused by estimation of environmental
Then we can design adaption gains γ to ensure that the stiffness Ke and inaccuracy of x in (22), xd we calculated is
Lyapunov derivative is always negative, so as to achieve the inaccurate and the actual contact force fe is not as expected.
˙ Therefore, we introduced the impedance control to adjust the
purpose of convergence. θ̂ can be rewritten as:
desired position.
In order to achieve better force tracking performance, the
˙
" #   
˙ K̂e γ11 0 x expected force fd is introduced into the robot impedance
ϑ̂ = ˙ =− (fˆe − fe ) (19)
f̂0 0 γ22 1 model, then the robot has the following expected impedance
relationship :
The adaptation law of K̂e can be obtained as follows :
˙ Md (ẍ − ẍd ) + Dd (ẋ − ẋd ) + Kd (x − xd ) = −(fe − fd )
K̂e = −γ11 x(fˆe − fe ) (20)
(23)
III. CONTROLLER DESIGN Set ex = x − xd and ef = fe − fd , we obtain:
Fig. 2 shows the control block diagram. Due to the high
Md ëx + Dd ėx + Kd ex = −ef (24)
environmental stiffness, a small error of the end of the ma-
nipulator can cause a large external force error, such that the The reference force information fd is added to the position
control goals cannot be achieved simply. And the unknown impedance model to compensate for the force information.

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TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 4

Through (24), we can calculate the correction of the reference is the input vector, S(·) is the activation function in neural
position ex after obtaining the force deviation ef and compen- networks, ψ is a n × 1 minimum neural networks approximate
sate the reference position xd to obtain the expected position error vector, which is small and bounded.
xr . If the robot did not contact the external environment, the ˙
reference force fd and the actual force fe will be 0, so ex Ŵi = −Γi [Si (Z)si + σi Ŵi ] (31)
will also be 0. The reference trajectory does not need to be where Γi is the constant gain matrix, and σi is small positive
adjusted, that is xr = xd . constants.

B. Singular Perturbation Control Method for Flexible Joints The controller can be designed as:
τs = −Kp s + τe + τada + Ŵ T S(Z) − kr sgn(z) (32)

qr
Neural where Ŵ T S(z) is the estimate of W T S(z), and sgn(z) is
Networks Fe
t NN J T Force the sliding control term for the neural networks approximate
Sensor
te
qr s t q errors.
Kp Robot q
t ada tm
Adaptive
tf
eKf
In order to provide sufficient damping to the boundary layer
Updater
system, the controller τf is proposed as
τf = −εKf τ̇m (33)
Fig. 3. Position controller of flexible joint robot.
Substituting (33) into (25), we have
We set τf = τ − τ̄ is proposed to guarantee the exponential
η 00 + J −1 KKf τ̇m + Kε [J −1 + M (q)−1 ]η = 0 (34)
stability of the boundary layer system. Define dη/dτ = η, and
the boundry layer system model is described as Then, the boundary layer system can easily be guaranteed the
exponential stability for appropriate control gain Kf .
η 00 + Kε [J −1 + M (q)−1 ]η = J −1 Kε τf (25)
So the flexible joint controller can be designed as:
The equations of boundary layer system and quasi-steady
state equation are expressed by (6) and (11), and the controllers τ = τs + τf (35)
can be designed respectively.
τs = τ̄ is uesd to guarantee the exponential stability of the
quasi-steady-state reduced system. Substituting s̄ = q̄˙ − q̄˙ r
into (9), we can obtain:
MB (q̄)(s̄˙ + q̄
¨r ) + C(q̄, q̄)(s̄
˙ + q̄˙ r ) + G(q̄) = τs − τe
(26) C. Stability analysis
We set MB (q̄) = M (q̄) + B and propose the control input
of robot as:
In this section, we analyze the stability of our proposed
method. In particular, we consider a Lyapunov function can-
τs = − Kp s + τe + τada
didates L as follows:
˙ q̇r + G(q)
+ [M (q) + B]q̈r + C(q̄, q̄) (27)
n×n
L = Le + Lw + Lf (36)
where Kp ∈ R is diagonal positive definite matrices and
the term −Kp s realizes tracking control tasks, and τada is an where:
adaptive item and the updated law is written as:
1 1 T
Le = sT Mbk s + τ τada
2 2β ada
τ̇ada (t + T ) = −βs(t) (28) n
1 X T −1
Lw = W̃ Γ W̃i
Substituting (27) into (26), we obtain: 2 i=1 i i
˙ + Kp ]s = τada 1 T 1 1
[M (q) + B]ṡ + [C(q̄, q̄) (29) Lf = (ė Md ėx + eTx Kd ex ) + eTf Ke−1 ef + ϑ̃T Υ−1 Qϑ̃
2 x 2 2
which is the dynamic equation of the subsystem.
˙ G(q) are unknown, we can use where Mbk = MB + Kp , W̃i = Ŵi − Wi represents the
Since M (q) + B, C(q̄, q̄),
RBFNN weight error, ef = fe − fd is force tracking error,
RBF neural network to approximate.
ex = x − xd is position tracking error, ek = K̂e − Ke is
˙ q̇r + G(q) = W ∗ S(Z) + ψ
[M (q) + B]q̈r + C(q̄, q̄) the error of environmental stiffness estimates, and ϑ̃ = ϑ̂ − ϑ
(30) donates the estimation error of environmental stiffness Ke .
−1
where W T ∗ S(Z) is an n × 1 ideal neural networks approxi- From (29) we can get ṡ = Mbk ˙ + Kp )s].
[τada − (C(q̄, q̄)
mate vector, Z = [q, q̇, −k1 ∗(q−qr )+ q̇r , −k2 ∗(q̇− q̇r )+ q̈r ] Substituting it and (28) into the time derivative of Le , we

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TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 5

obtain: also bounded.

1 1 T
L̇e = sT Mbk ṡ + sT Ṁbk s + τada τ̇ada IV. SIMULATION
2 β
1 1 T
= sT Mbk ṡ + sT ṀB s + τada τ̇ada
2 β
1 x rp xr
Controller Robot
˙ + Kp )s] + sT ṀB s − τada
= sT [τada − (C(q̄, q̄) T
s x rf
2 Impedance
1 Control
= sT τada − sT Kp s + sT (ṀB − 2C)s − τadaT
s S
2
T
= −s Kp s < 0 (37) I -S

f d xd fe xe
Ke
We consider that ϑ is constant, then its derivation ϑ̇ = 0.
And take the time derivative of Lf and substitute (24), we
obtain:
Fig. 4. Control scheme flow chart in Simulation.
˙
L̇f = −ėTx (Dd ėx + ef ) + eTf Ke−1 ėx + ϑ̃T Υ −1 Qϑ̃
˙ In the simulation part, we designed two simulations using
= −ėTx Dd ėx − ėTx ef + eTf ėx + ϑ̃T Υ −1 Qϑ̂ a 2-DOF manipulator to verify the impact performance and
= −ėT Dd ėx − ϑ̃T Υ −1 Q(Υϕfˆe )
x
tracking performance respectively. In this simulation scenario,
we set up an uneven wall at y = 0.4 m, which the manipulator
= −ėTx Dd ėx − f˜eT Qf˜e < 0 (38)
cannot obtain the position. In order to ensure that the effector
Taking the time derivative of Lw and substituting adaptation can exert a desired force as it moves along the wall, we adopt
law (31), we obtain: dif-ferent control strategies: position control on the x-axis and
n impedance control on the y-axis, as shown in Fig. 4.
X ˙
L̇w = W̃iT Γ−1
i Ŵi
i=1 A. Impact Simulation Results
n
X
= W̃iT Γ−1
i [−Γi (Si (Z)si + σi Ŵi )]
i=1
(39) v q t20 ( xt f , yt f ) l2 q t2f
l2
( xt0 , yt0 )
Considering (37), (38) and (39), we obtain:
l1 l1
L̇ =L̇e + L̇w + L̇f y
q t10 y qt1f
T
= − s Kp s − ef Qef − ėTx Dd ėx − x x
n
X T
W̃i Γ−1
i [−Γi (Si (Z)si + σi Ŵi )] Fig. 5. Illustration of Impact.
i=1
≤ − sT Kp s − (fˆe − fe )2 − ėTx Dd ėx Fig. 5 verifies the impact performance of the designed
Xn
σi Xn
σi 1 controller. We hope the effector moves from the initial position
− kW̃i k2 + kWi k2 + kk2 of x = −0.2 m, y = 0.3 m to the wall until the interaction
2 2 2
i=1 i=1 force with the wall is the desired 10 N. In the process, the
≤ − ρL + C (40) manipulator does not know the position of the wall.
Fig. 6 shows the position and angle tracking performances,
where
which the blue line is the desired position or angle and the
ρ =min(2λmin (Kp ), 2λmin (Q), 2λmin (Dd ), red line is actual. As shown in Fig. 6(c), the interaction force
σi tracks the expected interaction force after 0.04 s with an error
min( )) (41)
λmax (Γ−1
i )
of 0.01 N in simulation.
n
X σi 1
C= kWi k2 + kk2 (42) B. Force Tracking Simulation Results
i=1
2 2
Fig. 7 verifies the force tracking performance. After the
where λ(A) denotes the eigenvalue of matrix A. We choose robot completes the impact, the effector will move along the
Kp and Dd following as (43) to make ρ > 0: wall and continue to exert 10 N interaction force during this
process.
λmin (Kp ) > 0, λmin (Q) > 0, λmin (Dd ) > 0 (43)
We compare our proposed method with existing PID-based
Based on the above analysis, we can see that the s, ef , force tracking method in the revised manuscript. Fig. 8 shows
ex and W̃i are semiglobally uniformly bounded. It can be the values of interaction forces under our proposed method and
concluded that the position x, angular velocity q̇, external PID-based method, respectively, in which the blue line repre-
force fe and the weight estimation error of RBFNN W̃i are sents the desired tracking force, and the red line represents

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TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 6

-0.17 1.4 2.5 2.5

-0.18 2 2
position[m]

angle[rad]

angle[rad]
1.35

angle[rad]
-0.19 1.5 1.5
1.3
-0.2 1 1

-0.21 1.25 0.5 0.5

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
time[s] time[s] time[s] time[s]

0.6 2 2 2

1.8 1.5
position[m]

angle[rad]

angle[rad]
0.5

angle[rad]
1.5
1.6 1
0.4 1
1.4 0.5

0.3 1.2 0 0.5

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
time[s] time[s] time[s] time[s]

(a) Position tracking performance (b) Angle tracking performance (a) Angle of our proposed method (b) Angle of PID-based method
12

Fig. 9. The tracking performance in joint space.

10

8
11 0.5
0.5
force[N]

10.5 0.4
6 0.4
10
0.3
0.7s 0.3
9.5
-0.18
4 1.05s 0.2
0.2
-0.19
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
0.1

position[m]
-0.2

position[m]
0.1
-0.21
2
2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7
0
0

0.28
-0.1
-0.1
0 0.24
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
-0.2 0.2 -0.2
time[s]
0.16
-0.3 7.2 7.4 7.6 7.8 8 8.2 8.4 -0.3

(c) Force tracking performance -0.4 -0.4

-0.5 -0.5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
time[s] time[s]
Fig. 6. The position and angle tracking performance of impact simulation.
(a) Position tracking of our method(b) Position tracking of PID-based
method
( xt0 , yt0 ) v
q t20
l2
(xt f , yt f ) Fig. 10. The position tracking on X-axis.
l2 q t2 f

y q t10 y l1
l1
q t1 f
x x V. EXPERIMENTS
We design a force tracking experiment based on the Baxter
Fig. 7. Illustration of Force Tracking Simulation.
collaborative robot in this section, and the experiment setup is
shown in Fig. 12.
the actual external force. We can see the external force has The goal of the experiment is to control the robot to move
a mutation at 2.5 s and 7.5 s because the wall is not smooth from any initial point and clean the glass with a constant
in two places. But the interaction force changes quickly to interaction force, and it can be divided into three steps:
restore the tracking performance seen from Fig. 8. However, 1) The robot moves from the initial point to the starting
the overshoot of PID-based method is larger. point (The trajectory can be calculated by the glass
position);
11
14 2) After arrived the starting point, the robot drops the
10.8

10.6
10.2

10.1
12
appropriate position where the interaction force is re-
0.1N

10.4
9.9
10 10
lated with the desired force value obtained using the
8
impedance control method;
Force[N]

10.2 2 2.5 3 3.5

force[N]

10

6
9.8

9.6
10.1
4
3) The robot cleans the glass with constant interactive force
9.4
10

9.9 0.15N
2
(The cleaning trajectory is given but the position of the
9.2

9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
9.8
7

7
7.5 8

8
8.5

9 10
0
glass is not fixed).
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
time[s] time[s]
In the first step of the experiment, we used the position
(a) Force tracking of our method (b) Force tracking of PID-based method tracking controller on the x, y, z-axis; In the second and
Fig. 8. The performance in force tracking. third steps, the process is similar to simulation, we used the
position tracking controller on the x, y-axis, and force tracking
The blue line in Fig. 9 is the desired joint angle under controller on z-axis respectively. Since the small position
our proposed method and PID-based method, and the red tracking error will cause a large force tracking error, we must
line is the actual angle of the manipulator. We can see that ensure that the robot has good position tracking performance.
the controller has a satisfactory tracking performance, even if Fig. 13(a) shows the interaction force tracking performance,
there exists unsmooth angle change, it shows good tracking we can see that there are overshoots in the interaction force at
performance without vibration. Compared with PID-based the initial moment, but the tracking performance is quickly
method, our proposed method shows precise tracking. restored with little error. Fig. 13(b) and Fig. 13(c) show
Figs. 10 and 11 show tracking performance under our position or part of angles joint tracking performance, where
proposed method and PID-based method, where the blue line the blue line repre-sents the desired position and the red line
is desired position and the red line is actual position in X-axis represents the actual position. We can see that the controller
and Y-axis, respectively. Compared with PID-based method, has good position and force tracking performance.
our proposed method has higher tracking accuracy.

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 This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics. This is the author's version which has not been fully edited and
content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIE.2023.3290250

TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 7

step 1 step 2 step 3 step 1 step 2 step 3

0.65
0.65

0.52 0.6
0.6
0.5

0.48

0.46
0.55
0.55 0.4s

position[m]
0.44
position[m]

2.4 2.6 2.8 3

0.5
0.5

0.45
0.45
0.52

0.5

0.4 0.02m 0.4

0.48

7 7.5 8 8.5

0.35 0.35
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
time[s] time[s]

(a) Position tracking of our method(b) Position tracking of PID-based

method (a) Force tracking performance (b) Positon tracking performance

Fig. 11. The position tracking on Y-axis. Fig. 13. The tracking performance of experiment.

Joint S0 Joint S1
step 1: Robot moves to the starting point. (T = 0 - 3.2s) 0.5 0.1 -0.8 0.1

0.2
0.05 -0.9 0.05

Angle error[rad]
Angle error[rad]

Angle[rad]
Angle[rad]
-0.1

0 -1 0

-0.4

-0.05 -1.1 -0.05

-0.7

step 2: Robot drops to the appropriate position. (T = 3.2 - 6.7s)

-1 -0.1 -1.2 -0.1
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
time[s] time[s]

(a) Joint S0 (b) Joint S1

Joint E0 Joint E1
1.4 0.1 2.1 0.1

1.3
0.05 1.9 0.05

step 3: Robot cleans the glass with constant force. (T = 6.7 ā 20s)

Angle error[rad]

Angle error[rad]
Angle[rad]

Angle[rad]
1.2

0 1.7 0

1.1

-0.05 1.5 -0.05

1

0.9 -0.1 1.3 -0.1

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
time[s] time[s]

(c) Joint E0 (d) Joint E1

Joint W0 Joint W1
-0.55 0.1 1.4 0.1

-0.575

0.05 1.3 0.05

-0.6

Angle error[rad]

Angle error[rad]
Angle[rad]

Angle[rad]
Fig. 12. Illustration of the experiment setup. -0.625 0 1.2 0

-0.65

-0.05 1.1 -0.05

-0.675

VI. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK -0.7

0 2 4 6 8 10
time[s]
12 14 16 18 20
-0.1 1
0 2 4 6 8
time[s]
10 12 14 16 18 20
-0.1

In this paper, we proposed a control scheme for the flexible (e) Joint W0 (f) Joint W1
joint robot to realize force tracking in an unknown environ- 0.7
Joint W2
0.1

ment. The controller was composed of an outer loop based 0.4

0.05

on force control and an inner loop based on position control.

Angle error[rad]
Angle[rad]

0.1

According to the force error and the estimated stiffness of the -0.2

unknown environment, the tracking trajectory was obtained -0.5

-0.05

from the force-based outer loop. The controller based on -0.8

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20
-0.1

time[s]
singular perturbation ensured the tracking performance. The
(g) Joint W2
RBFNN in the controller was used to compensate for uncer-
tainties of robotic dynamics. And we used Lyapunov method to Fig. 14. The tracking performance of 7 joints in experiment.
prove the stability and verified the effectiveness by simulations
and experiments.
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TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS
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 This article has been accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics. This is the author's version which has not been fully edited and
content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIE.2023.3290250

TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS 9

Xinbo Yu (Member, IEEE) received the B.E. degree Haifeng Huang (Member, IEEE) received the
in control technology and instrument and the Ph.D. B.Eng. degree in automation and the Ph.D. degree in
degree in control science and engineering from the control science and engineering from the School of
School of Automation and Electrical Engineering, Automation and Electrical Engineering, University
University of Science and Technology Beijing, Bei- of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China,
jing, China, in 2013 and 2020, respectively. in 2016 and 2022, respectively.
He is currently working as an Associate Professor His current research interests include bionic
with the School of Intelligence Science and Technol- flapping-wing robot, neural network control, and
ogy, University of Science and Technology Beijing. fault-tolerant control.
His current research interests include adaptive NNs
control, robotics and human-robot interaction. His
current research interests include intelligent robot control and human-robot
collaboration.

Sisi Liu received the B.E. degree in control technol-

ogy from the School of Automation and Electrical
Engineering, University of Science and Technology
Beijing, Beijing, China, in 2020.
She is currently studying with the School of
Intelligence Science and Technology, University of
Science and Technology Beijing.

Shuang Zhang (Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D.

degree in control science and engineering from the
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer-
ing, National University of Singapore, Singapore, in
2012.
She is currently working as an Full Professor with
the School of Intelligence Science and Technology,
University of Science and Technology Beijing, Bei-
jing, China. Her current research interests include
robotics, adaptive controls, and vibration controls.

Wei He (S’09-M’12-SM’16) received his B.Eng.

and his M.Eng. degrees from College of Automation
Science and Engineering, South China University
of Technology (SCUT), China, in 2006 and 2008,
respectively, and his PhD degree from Department
of Electrical & Computer Engineering, the National
University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore, in 2011.
He is currently working as a full professor in School
of Intelligence Science and Technology and Institute
of Artificial Intelligence, University of Science and
Technology Beijing, Beijing, China. He has co-
authored 3 books published in Springer and published over 200 international
journal and conference papers. He was awarded a Newton Advanced Fellow-
ship from the Royal Society, UK in 2017. He is a highly cited researcher
by Clarivate Analytics in from 2019 to 2022. He is serving the Chair of
IEEE SMC Society Beijing Capital Region Chapter. From 2018, he has been
the chair of Technical Committee on Autonomous Bionic Robotic Aircraft
(TC-ABRA), IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society. He was served/is
serving as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE
Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, IEEE Transactions
on Control Systems Technology, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and
Cybernetics: Systems, SCIENCE CHINA Information Sciences, IEEE/CAA
Journal of Automatica Sinica, Neurocomputing, and an Editor of Journal of
Intelligent & Robotic Systems. He is the member of IEEE CSS Conference
Editorial Board (CEB). His current research interests include robotics and
intelligent control systems.

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