Nonlinear H∞ control for synchronization of networked manipulators subject to delayed communication

In this paper, a distributed synchronization control scheme is proposed for a group of robotic manipulators with non-identical dynamics and model uncertainties subject to time-varying communication delays. By using the nonlinear H∞ control strategy, a dynamic distributed control law is developed to achieve synchronous tracking of networked robots in the joint space. Solving differential inequalities for obtaining controller parameters is a complicated task that is encountered in the nonlinear H∞ control framework, and the main feature of the suggested approach is that the parameters of the controller are found by checking the feasibility of a set of matrix inequalities. The proposed control method is implemented via simulation and its applicability is verified by illustrative results.