The 5th International Conference on Electrical Engineering – Boumerdes (ICEE-B)

October 29-31, 2017, Boumerdes, Algeria.

Sliding Mode Control of a 5 DoFs Upper Limb

Exoskeleton Robot
Ratiba Fellag1,2, Takieddine Benyahia3, Mustapha Drias3, Mohamed Guiatni3 and Mustapha Hamerlain1
1
Centre de Développement des Technologies Avancées, Alger, Algérie
E-mails: rfellag@cdta.dz, mhamerlain@cdta.dz
2
Laboratoire LRPE, Université des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene, Alger, Algérie
3
Ecole Militaire Polytechnique, Bordj El Bahri, Alger, Algérie
E-mails: benyahia.taki@gmail.com, dri.mustapha@gmail.com, mohamed.guiatni@gmail.com

Abstract—Recent advances in robotics have led to the
development of exoskeleton robots that are becoming extensively
used in the medical domain, to assist and help people suffering
from physical impairments recover mobility. Most of existing
controllers designed for position control of exoskeleton robots are
linear which may not be suitable for exoskeleton robots having
complex structures under heavy uncertainties. In this paper, a
sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed for position control of
a 5 degrees of freedom exoskeleton robot dedicated for upper
limb rehabilitation. The proposed sliding mode controller will be
compared to a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller
in order to verify its control performance. Experiments will be
conducted considering two cases, firstly when the exoskeleton
robot is subject to its own weight then with supplementary loads
added to the exoskeleton to imitate the human upper limb.
Results are illustrated and discussed in this paper.
Keywords-Exoskeleton robot; sliding control; upper limb;
position control.
I. INTRODUCTION
Human upper limb motions are essential in activities of
daily life, such as eating, self-care and manipulating objects.
These motions, which are trivial for healthy people, constitute a
burden to physically impaired ones. In fact, motor impairments
affecting human upper limbs are often due to neurological
disorders caused by stroke, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain
injury, cerebral palsy, or spinal cord injury [1, 2] leading to full
or partial disability.
In the last decades, the number of impaired people has
increased at a disquieting rate. Apart from conventional
rehabilitation, which is performed through manual exercises by
a therapist, a number of robotic devices have been developed
for upper limb rehabilitation [3-5]. Studies have demonstrated
that these devices provide safe and intensive [6] task oriented
set of repetitive exercises instructed by a therapist. One of the
advantages of exoskeleton robots for rehabilitation is that they
can be used either in a clinical environment or at home for
some commercialized rehabilitation robots. A full and detailed
survey for upper limb rehabilitation robots gathering more than
200 references is given in [7] and references therein.
The existing rehabilitation robots can be classified into two
categories based on their mechanical structure, we find: end-
effector based and exoskeleton based rehabilitation robots [7].
While end-effector robots have only one contact point with the
upper limb extremity, exoskeleton robots have multiple contact
with the human upper extremity. This gives advantage to this
type of device as different joints may be controlled
independently and concurrently with more degrees of freedom
(DoFs) as illustrated in Fig. 1.
Besides, since rehabilitation robots are intended for helping
or assisting impaired people to recover their daily life
activities, special care should be considered when developing
their control methodologies. Several approaches including
linear and nonlinear control techniques have been implemented
on rehabilitation robots, particularly on exoskeleton based
devices. The proposed controllers are used to control force [8],
position [9] or both in a hybrid control [10] and use different
types of input signals to achieve desired movements. We cite
some works about the control of exoskeleton robotic systems in
the literature, a linear proportional-derivative (PD) controller in
[9, 11] , linear PID controller in [12, 13]. A computed torque
control approach in [11, 14]. Impedance control in [15, 16] and
admittance control in [17].
The fundamental goal of the developed control
methodologies is providing high dynamic tracking performance
and generating the necessary force to achieve the desired
displacements in an efficient and safe manner. It is argued that
the use of linear control approaches could be limited in solving
non-linearity issues and modeling errors associated with
exoskeletons [18]. Sliding mode control is a robust variable
structure control than can accomplish a very good tracking in
spite of parametric and modeling uncertainties as well as
perturbations [19].
Figure 1. End-effector (left) and exoskeleton based robots (right)

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 Yet, chattering is the main drawback of this control
approach due to high frequency commutation across the sliding
surface. Several solutions are proposed in the literature to
attenuate or eliminate this phenomenon like the boundary layer
solution [19], higher order sliding control [20], generalized
variable structure control [21, 22] and many other propositions
may be found. This control approach has been applied to
exoskeleton based robots in some works like [18, 23, 24].
In this work, we will design and implement a sliding mode
controller (SMC) for position control of a 5 DoFs upper limb
exoskeleton. In order to evaluate control performance of the
proposed controller, we will compare it to a proportional-
integral-derivative (PID) controller. Experiments are realized in
the control laboratory of the Ecole Militaire Polytechnique. The
control objective is to track a desired trajectory with both
controllers under two cases, firstly when the exoskeleton is
subject to its own weight and then with a loaded exoskeleton as
to imitate the human upper limb. This allows to verify the Figure 2. The 5 DoFs upper limb exoskeleton robot
robustness of the proposed controllers under the same
conditions. vector, G (q) ∈  5 is the gravity force vector, and Fext ∈  5 is
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the friction vector.
section II, we present the 5 DoFs upper limb exoskeleton robot. Using (1) and Lagrange formalism to develop the inverse
In section III, we present robot dynamics and parameters dynamic model of our 5 DoFs exoskeleton robot, we obtained a
identification. Controllers design is presented in section IV. very complex mathematical dynamic model that cannot be used
Experimental results are then illustrated in section V. After directly in the development of the control due to coupling
which a conclusion is drawn in section VI. terms, strong non-linearity and the hybrid configuration of the
robot. The solution is thus, to carry out an identification
II. UPPER LIMB EXOSKELETON DESCRIPTION process of the real dynamics of the robot. This procedure
consists in the characterization of an approximated model
The exoskeleton robot that will be used in this work is a 5
based on experimental knowledge of the behavior of the
DoFs exoskeleton for upper limb rehabilitation designed and
exoskeleton.
developed at the Control laboratory of the Ecole Militaire
Polytechnique- EMP (Algiers, Algeria). This device has a The exoskeleton robot is first excited with a desired
hybrid configuration [9] involving serial and parallel trajectory and input/output measurements of the torques and
mechanisms where 2 DoFs of parallel mechanism ensure positions for each active joint are recorded. Then, this set of
movements of the shoulder. They are made up of two serial measurement data are introduced into the System Identification
chains coupled through a moving part to support a third DoF Toolbox provided by MATLAB to obtain the approximated
serial chain. The first chain constitutes a two-axes serial model of the exoskeleton robot. In this work, we propose to use
manipulator and the second chain constitute a three-axes serial a linear, decoupled model that reflects the real dynamics of our
manipulator. This overall configuration allows for both exoskeleton since sliding mode control allows the assumption
shoulder and elbow movement rehabilitation. This design was of a decoupled linear model where joint interaction is
performed and validated under SolidWorks 3D Computer considered as external disturbance. The best curve fit of the
Aided Design (CAD) software [9]. Fig. 2 depicts the linear approximated dynamic model for each joint is given in
mechanical structure and the 3D Solidworks prototype of our 5 the following form:
DoFs upper limb exoskeleton.
q + A1q + A2 q = BU (2)
III. EXOSKELETON DYNAMICS AND PARAMETER where matrices A1 , A2 and B represent dynamic parameters
IDENTIFICATION
to be identified for each of the five joints. U is the control
Dynamic modeling is used to establish the relationship vector.
between the forces of the actuators and the generated
movements. The generalized equation of motion of the 5 DoFs The corresponding transfer matrix form of (2) for each joint
exoskeleton robot can be expressed as: is written as:

M (q)q + H (q, q ) + G (q ) + Fext = τ (1) qi ( s ) bi

= i = 1,..,5 (3)
Ui ( s ) s 2 + ai1 s + ai 2
where q ∈  is the joint’s angular position, τ
5
is the
generated control torque vector, M (q) ∈  5× 5
is the inertia where ai1 , ai 2 and bi are elements of matrices A1 , A2 and B
respectively. For the 5 DoFs upper limb exoskeleton robot, the
matrix, H (q, q ) ∈  is the Coriolis and Centrifugal forces
5
list of dynamic identification parameters are given in Table. 1.

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 TABLE 1. DYNAMIC IDENTIFICATION PARAMETERS B. PID controller
Parameters Joint 1 Joint 2 Joint 3 Joint 4 Joint 5 One of the most commonly used control algorithms in
a1 2.014 2.646 3.221 1.230 0.006
industrial processes is the PID controller. The PID controller is
13.26 26.04 59.76 9.573 8.438
a linear controller that takes the error between the actual
a2
position and the desired position to control the motion of the
b -1.73 1.341 14.21 -10.21 -44.12
different joint of the exoskeleton robot. This controller can be
IV. CONTROLLERS DESIGN easily implemented. Still, this control technique does not give
sufficient control for time-varying systems or systems with
A. Sliding mode controller strong non-linearity. Mathematically, the formulation of the
PID control law is given by:
Sliding mode control is a non-linear control technique,
featuring very interesting properties. It is one of the most d ei
efficient control approaches for controlling systems under Ui = k p ei + ki ³ ei dt + kd (10)
pid dt
heavy uncertainty conditions [25, 26] . The controller design
procedure is very simple. It consists of two steps. Firstly, the where ei is the tracking error between the actual and the
choice of the sliding surface so that sliding motion satisfies the desired positions of the joint. It is defined as in (5). k p , ki
control specifications then the design of the control law that
brings the state trajectories of the closed loop system towards and kd are the proportional gain, the integral gain and the
the sliding surface and cause them to switch around this surface derivative gain of the controller respectively. These gains of
to the equilibrium point. the PID controller are tuned using MATLAB Control System
Designer SISO tool using the obtained identified model of the
The sliding surface for each joint is selected as: exoskeleton robot.
Si = λi ei + ei 1 ≤ i ≤ 5 , λi > 0 (4)
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
where ei is the tracking error for each joint, which is defined
In this section, we present experimental results obtained
as:
when applying sliding mode and PID controllers to position
ei = qi − qid i = 1..5 (5) control of the 5 DoFs upper limb exoskeleton. Since the
exoskeleton robot is intended for upper limb rehabilitation,
with qi is the measured joint position and qid is the desired which consists of a set of movement exercises instructed by a
trajectory for each joint. therapist, we will experiment our exoskeleton by imposing a
reference trajectory to the different joints and apply both
The choice of the sliding surface (4) implies that if this
controllers to track this reference trajectory. Experiments were
surface is reached, the tracking error will converge to zero as
long as state trajectory stays on the sliding surface. performed for two cases: when the exoskeleton is subjected to
its own weight and with a supplementary load to simulate the
Convergence rate depends on to the choice of the λi
presence of a patient’s upper limb. Design parameters of the
parameter. SMC controller are listed in Table 2 whereas the PID
The control law must satisfy existence condition of sliding controller parameters are listed in Table 3.
mode control defined as:
TABLE 2. SMC DESIGN PARAMETERS
Si Si < 0 (6)
Parameters Joint 1 Joint 2 Joint 3 Joint 4 Joint 5
K 10 12 5 1 5
The simplest discontinuous first order sliding mode control
across S = 0 is expressed as: λ 5 5 5 20 5

U i = − Ki sign ( Si ) (7) TABLE 3. PID DESIGN PARAMETERS

Parameters Joint 1 Joint 2 Joint 3 Joint 4 Joint 5
where Ki is a positive constant and sign(.) is defined as: kp -1.71 3.29 0.22 -0.00822 -0.08

­ +1 if Si > 0 ki -4.63 1.53 0.147 -0.00555 -0.24

°
sign ( Si ) = ®0 if Si = 0 (8) kd 0.253 -2.64 0.04 -0.00241 -0.00498
° −1 if Si < 0
¯ A. Experiments with no load
Therefore, the control U is given by: Experimental results obtained for position control of the
five joints of our upper limb exoskeleton robot are depicted in
­U imax if Si > 0 Fig. 3, Fig. 4, Fig. 5, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 respectively. These
Ui = ® (9)
¯U imin if Si < 0 figures show that both SMC and PID controllers achieve the
control objective that it to follow the desired trajectory for all
joints.

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 Figure 6. PID vs SMC position control for joint 4
Figure 3. PID vs SMC position control for joint 1

However, we notice that SMC performs better as it

converges faster to the desired trajectory. Convergence time is
less than 0.2 sec for SMC and between 0.32 sec and 1 sec for
PID. Faster convergence time is one of the well-known
advantages of SMC.

Figure 7. PID vs SMC position control for joint 5

results with additional loads to the exoskeleton as illustrated in

Figure 4. PID vs SMC position control for joint 2
Fig. 8 to stimulate the patient's upper extremity taking into
account the physical limits of the structure. Loads of 2 kg are
set at the arm and 800 gr at the forearm of the upper limb
exoskeleton and apply a permanent force which can be
considered as perturbation.
The control objective is to track the same desired reference
trajectory using SMC and PID controllers for all joints of our
upper limb exoskeleton. This set of experiments are conducted
to test the robustness of the proposed controllers under the
same experimental conditions.

Figure 5. PID vs SMC position control for joint 3

As for the position tracking error, it can be seen from

depicted figures of all joints that it is smaller when using SMC
controller as compared to PID controller. For example, for the
third (Fig. 5) and the fourth (Fig. 6) joints, position error when
applying a PID is more than 1 degree as compared to that one
obtained using SMC which is always less than 0.01 degree.
B. Experiments with supplementary loads to the exoskeleton
Since the exoskeleton is intended for rehabilitation Figure 8. Supplementary loads added to the exoskeleton
exercises, we present, in this subsection, implementation

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Figure 9. PID vs SMC position control with supplementary load for joint 1
Figures Fig. 9, Fig. 10, Fig. 11, Fig. 12 and Fig. 13 depict
experimental results for position control obtained using SMC
and PID controllers under supplementary loads added to the
exoskeleton for the five joints respectively. We notice from
these figures that both controllers track the desired trajectory
successfully for all joints of the exoskeleton and thus achieve
the control objective.
Figure 10. PID vs SMC position control with supplementary load for joint 2
Better convergence time and smaller position tracking
errors are obtained with SMC as compared to PID. The
convergence time to the desired trajectory is comprised
between 0.1 sec and 0.2 sec for SMC and between 0.3 sec and
1 sec for PID.
Figure 11. PID vs SMC position control with supplementary load for joint 3
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Figure 12. PID vs SMC position control with supplementary load for joint 4
As for position tracking error, it can be seen from obtained
results that it is less than 0.06 degree when applying SMC
while it can reach 1 degree using PID controller. For example,
for the three last joints (Fig. 11, Fig. 12 and Fig. 13) which are
loaded with heavy loads, SMC performs better than PID
controller which confirms the robustness of SMC.
Figure 13. PID vs SMC position control with supplementary load for joint 5
VI. CONCLUSION
We presented in this paper the implementation of a sliding
mode controller to position control of 5 DoFs upper limb
exoskeleton robot. The control objective was to track a desired
trajectory as to imitate robot-assisted rehabilitation principle.
In order to verify the performance of the proposed controller,
we compared it to a linear PID controller. Firstly, the
controllers are applied to exoskeleton with no load then
supplementary loads are added to the exoskeleton's joints to
evaluate the robustness of the controllers. The obtained
experimental results illustrate a good position tracking using
both controllers. Yet, we noticed a better control performance
using SMC in particular for the case when the exoskeleton is
loaded. We note also a faster convergence time to the desired
trajectory and a smaller position tracking error using SMC as
compared to PID. These results confirm the robustness and the
good precision of SMC.
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