PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT OF ROBOT CONTINUOUS-PATH OPERATION THROUGH ITERATIVE LEARNING USING NEURAL NETWORKS

In this article, an approach to improving the performance of robot continuous-path operation is proposed. This approach utilizes a multilayer feedforward neural network to compensate for model uncertainty associated with the robotic operation. Closed-loop stability and performance are analyzed. It is shown that the closed-loop system is stable in the sense that all signals are bounded; it is further proved that the performance of the closed-loop system is improved in the sense that certain error measure of the closed-loop system decreases as the network learning process is iterated. These analytical results are confirmed by computer simulation. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated through a laboratory experiment.