Experiments on position and force hybrid control using PID and fuzzy controllers for a robotic manipulator with artificial rubber muscles

This paper describes a position and force hybrid control problem in a robot manipulator with artificial rubber muscle actuators. Three control laws, the PID control, the fuzzy control and the PID plus fuzzy control which have no information on a mathematical model of the control object, are applied to this problem. Since it is not easy to optimally determine many PID servo gains, we introduce a new fuzzy control method in which trials and errors required to tune the fuzzy controller can be reduced, compared with the conventional method. In addition, this fuzzy controller can also be applied to compensate a PID servo controller without tuning feedback gains. The effectiveness of the three control laws is illustrated by conducting some experiments on a two-link manipulator.