Robust Adaptive Fractional‐Order Terminal Sliding Mode Control for Lower‐Limb Exoskeleton

Abstract

Abstract This paper introduces a robust adaptive fractional‐order non‐singular fast terminal sliding mode control (RFO‐TSM) for a lower‐limb exoskeleton system subject to unknown external disturbances and uncertainties. The referred RFO‐TSM is developed in consideration of the advantages of fractional‐order and non‐singular fast terminal sliding mode control (FONTSM): fractional‐order is used to obtain good tracking performance, while the non‐singular fast TSM is employed to achieve fast finite‐time convergence, non‐singularity and reducing chattering phenomenon in control input. In particular, an adaptive scheme is formulated with FONTSM to deal with uncertain dynamics of exoskeleton under unknown external disturbances, which makes the system robust. Moreover, an asymptotical stability analysis of the closed‐loop system is validated by Lyapunov proposition, which guarantees the sliding condition. Lastly, the efficacy of the proposed method is verified through numerical simulations in comparison with advanced and classical methods.