Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators

Xiaofei LI; Jin WANG; Haiyun ZHANG; Guodong LU; Yifei CHEN; Jiachun WU; Chi ZHANG

doi:10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0166

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Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators

Regular Papers | Updated：2026-10-08

- Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators
- Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators
- ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering Vol. 27, Issue 9, Pages: 1-16(2026)
- Affiliations：
  
  State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic Systems, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
  Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Industrial Big Data and Robot Intelligent Systems, Hangzhou 310058, China
  Robotics Research Center of Yuyao City, Ningbo 315400, China
  College of Robotics, Ningbo University of Technology, Ningbo 315211, China
  Emergen Technology Co., Ltd., Ningbo 315400, China
  Hangzhou Hikrobot Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou 311507, China
- Author bio：
  
  ✉Jin WANG, dwjcom@zju.edu.cn
- Funds：
- DOI：10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0166
  CLC： TP242
- Received：30 May 2026，
  
  Revised：2026-06-22，
  
  Published：01 September 2026
- Accepted：
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Xiaofei LI, Jin WANG, Haiyun ZHANG, et al. Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators[J]. ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 2026, 27(9): 1-16.
DOI：

Xiaofei LI, Jin WANG, Haiyun ZHANG, et al. Adaptive practical fixed-time tracking control with prescribed performance for robotic manipulators[J]. ENGINEERING Information Technology & Electronic Engineering, 2026, 27(9): 1-16. DOI： 10.1631/ENG.ITEE.2026.0166.

摘要

Abstract

Robotic manipulators often suffer from insufficient positioning accuracy due to dynamic uncertainties

while existing control algorithms struggle to simultaneously achieve fast response and high tracking precision and often rely on complex dynamic models that demand excessive computational power

hindering practical onboard deployment. To address these issues

we propose an advanced real-time capable onboard tracking controller for robotic manipulators with dynamic uncertainties

which can balance the overall control performance

computational complexity

and parameter setting. The controller is suitable for direct implementation on embedded hardware with limited computational resources

without requiring heavy dynamics computation or learning approximation. First

a model-free adaptive time-delay estimator is designed to estimate and compensate for the lumped dynamic uncertainties of the robotic manipulator

where the gain matrix is directly updated by the magnitude of the sliding mode variable of tracking error for excellent overall performance. Then

an adaptive fixed-time nonsingular terminal sliding mode controller with prescribed performance is developed to stabilize the tracking errors of the robotic manipulator in a predefined fixed time. The controller parameters determine an upper bound of the fixed convergence time through analytically derived expressions

where the actual settling time is automatically ensured regardless of the initial conditions. The fast response and accurate steady-state tracking are also guaranteed by the prescribed performance

such that the processing quality and efficiency of the robotic manipulator during real-time operation tasks can be improved. Moreover

the adaptive updating law for the tracking controller gain is designed to achieve fixed-time stability of the entire closed-loop states without the requirement of an exact upper bound of dynamic uncertainties or estimation errors. The proposed tracking control scheme for robotic manipulators is easy to implement owing to the convenient parameter setting and low computational burden

and its effectiveness is verified by simulations and experiments.

关键词

Keywords

references

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