IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO.
3, MAY 1997
Brief Papers
Fuzzy PID Control of a Flexible-Joint Robot Arm with
Uncertainties from Time-Varying Loads
Heidar A. Malki, Dave Misir, Denny Feigenspan, and Guanrong Chen
Abstract— This paper presents the design and experiment of
a fuzzy proportional integral derivative (PID) controller for a
flexible-joint robot arm with uncertainties from time-varying
loads. Experimental results have shown remarkable tracking
performance of this fuzzy PID controller, and have convincingly
demonstrated that fuzzy logic control can be used for flexible-
joint robot arms with uncertainties and it is quite robust. In
this paper, the fuzzy PID controller is first described briefly,
using a simple and practical PD+I controller configuration. This
configuration preserves the linear structure of the conventional
PD+I controller, but has nonconstant gains: the proportional,
integral, and derivative gains are nonlinear functions of their
input signals, which have self-tuning (adaptive) capabilities in set-
point tracking performance. Moreover, these variable gains make
the fuzzy PID controller robust with faster response time and less
overshoot than its conventional counterpart. The proposed design
was tested using a flexible-joint robot arm driven by a dc motor in
a laboratory, where the arm was experienced with time-varying
loads. Control performance by the conventional and fuzzy PID
controllers for such a laboratory robotic system are both included
in this paper for comparison.
Index Terms—Flexible-joint robot, fuzzy control, PID control,
uncertainty.
I. INTRODUCTION
R OBOT control is one of the practical, yet difficult,
field that is of interest to both academia and industry.
Conventional control systems theory have proven to be very
effective for systems that can be modeled relatively precisely
by mathematical equations. However, they have been found
to be inefficient in handling systems that are either too com-
plex or too vague to be described by accurate mathematical
models. Some difficult issues related to these systems are
inertia, momentum, friction, damping, time-lags, oscillations,
nonlinearities, and complex structure, etc. Robot control is one
of the industrial applications that has many such problems,
which calls for more flexible strategies.
There have been numerous conventional approaches in
the literature to the control of various robotic manipulators,
including robust control methods [14]. These approach gen-
erally require a mathematical model, at least an approximate
one, for the design of a controller. In recent years, artificial
Manuscript received March 5, 1996. Recommended by Associate Editor, B.
Espiau. This work was supported by the Energy Laboratory, the Institute for
Space Systems Operations, and the LGIA Grants program at the University
of Houston.
The authors are with the University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204 USA.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1063-6536(97)03276-4.
1063–6536/97$10.00  1997 IEEE
371
intelligence, particularly neural networks and fuzzy logic, have
also been proposed for this purpose, which generally does not
require a precise system model in the design of the controller.
References in this area are actually too many to cite [3]. To
name a few, we only mention that Cela and Hamam used
fuzzy robust control for robotic trajectory tracking [1], Liu
and Lewis applied fuzzy logic in the control of flexible and
mobile robots [7], [8], Neyer and Gorez adopted a fuzzy
model-based control strategy [11], Jamshidi and his colleagues
took a hierarchical approach in the fuzzy control [4], [17],
Segino and Nuhida [15] employed fuzzy logic to the control
of a car along a crank-shaped course, Zhang [20] applied
fuzzy control to autonomous robot systems, and Pham et
al. [13] applied a dynamical fuzzy modeling technique [3]
to docking a boat, and later to multilink robot arms [12].
In this pursuit, Tang and Chen applied a robust fuzzy PI
controller to a trajectory tracking problem of a robot arm with
higher uncertainties of several parameters [16], Upadhyaya
and Chen designed a fuzzy controller that optimizes the
linear quadratic (LQ) criterion for an uncertain robot arm
[18], and the present authors designed and built a fuzzy PD-
based controller for a dc motor with a static load [9]. To
further improve the performance, in this paper we design
and test a fuzzy PD I controller and apply it to the control
of a flexible-joint robot arm with time-varying loads, which
contains significant uncertainties.
The significance of the proposed design that may differ
from other fuzzy or nonfuzzy proportional integral derivative
(PID)-type controllers include the following [10], [19].
1) It preserves the linear structure of the conventional PID
controller, but has nonconstant gains: the proportional,
integral, and derivative gains are nonlinear functions
of their input signals, which have self-tuned (adaptive)
capability in set-point tracking performance. Moreover,
these variable gains make the fuzzy PID controller
robust, with faster response time and less overshoot.
2) The controller is designed based on the precise mathe-
matical model of a digital PD I controller, from which
the fuzzy control law is derived, and hence is mathe-
matically rigorous.
3) Membership functions are simple triangular ones with
only four fuzzy logic if–then rules for each of the PD
and the I (integral) control components.
4) The fuzzification, control-rule base, and defuzzification
configurations are all embedded in the final result of
372 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997

Letting and , and then taking the

inverse -transform, we have

(1)
Further dividing (1) by , and using to mean from now
+
Fig. 1. The conventional continuous-time PD I control system. on, we obtain
(2)
the fuzzy control law, which is a small set of explicit
conventional control formulas, so that the fuzzification- where
rules-defuzzification routine is not needed throughout
(3)
the entire control process. Thus, the fuzzy PID controller
avoids using the look-up tables and is suitable for real-
(4)
time applications.
5) The fuzzy if–then rules in this design are “generic type”
(5)
and so can be applied to various systems, generally
without requesting the knowledge from domain experts. We can then rewrite (3) as
6) The I (integral) controller can be independently adjusted
to reduce integral windup (if it exists). (6)
In the next section, the mathematical framework for the
Replacing the term by a fuzzy control action gain,
design and implementation of the fuzzy PID controller is
we finally arrive at
presented. In Section III, the experimental setup of the fuzzy
PID control robotic system is described and discussed. Finally, (7)
Section IV shows the laboratory experimental results and
compares the conventional and fuzzy PID control systems where is a fuzzy control gain.
under the same conditions. Our experimental results have
shown remarkable tracking performance of this fuzzy PID B. Derivation of the Fuzzy I Controller
controller, which convincingly demonstrates that fuzzy logic The I controller in the PD I control system, as shown in
PID control can be used for flexible-joint robot arms with Fig. 1, has as its input and as its output. It is clear that
uncertainties and it is quite robust. in the frequency -domain we have

(8)
II. OVERVIEW OF THE FUZZY PID CONTROLLER
In this section, we briefly describe the mathematical prin- where is the conventional integral control gain and is
ciple for the fuzzy PID controller design, including the fuzzi- the error signal. Under the bilinear transformation, (8) becomes
fication, rule-base and defuzzification. In this design, we use
a standard PD I controller configuration to be practical [2]. (9)
The design of the fuzzy PID controller hence consists of two
parts: one fuzzy PD and one fuzzy I controllers. Details in the so that
design of the fuzzy PD part can be found in Malki et al. [10].
(10)
A. Derivation of the Fuzzy PD Controller
Consequently, we have
The output of the conventional analog PD controller in the
frequency -domain, as can be verified easily from Fig. 1, is
given by
(11)
Then dividing (11) by yields
where and are the conventional proportional and (12)
derivative gains, respectively, and is the tracking error
signal. where and , with
This equation can be transformed into the discrete version
by applying the bilinear transformation (13)
, where is the sampling period, which results in
and

(14)
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997 373

+
Fig. 2. The fuzzy PD I control system.

Letting be a fuzzy control gain, as was similarly done for

the fuzzy PD controller case discussed above, we arrive at

(15)

C. Combination of the Fuzzy PD I Controller

Finally, the overall fuzzy PD I control law can be obtained Fig. 3. The input membership functions for the PD component.
by algebraically summing the fuzzy PD control law (7) and
fuzzy I control law (15) together. The result is

(16)

Equation (16) will be referred to as the fuzzy PD I control

Fig. 4. The output membership functions for the PD component.
law throughout the paper.
The overall fuzzy PD I controller is shown in Fig. 2,
where the fuzzy PD and I controllers will be inserted into
the configuration later.

D. Fuzzification, Control Rule Base, and Defuzzification

We have followed the standard procedure of fuzzy con-
trollers design, which consists of fuzzification, control rule
Fig. 5. The input membership functions for the I component.
base establishment, and defuzzification.
1) Fuzzification: We fuzzify the PD and I components of
the PD I control system individually and then combine the The I controller has two inputs: the delayed error signal
desired fuzzy control rules for each of them, taking into and the rate of changes of the error signal .
consideration the overall PD I fuzzy control law given in The input and output membership functions for the fuzzy I
(16). Similar to the fuzzy PD controller [10], the input and controller are shown in Figs. 5 and 6, respectively.
output membership functions of the PD component are shown 2) Fuzzy Control Rules: Using the aforementioned mem-
in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively. bership functions, the following control rules are established
The fuzzy PD controller employs two inputs: the average for the fuzzy PD controller.
error signal and the rate of change of the error signal (R1) IF AND Then PD-output .
. The fuzzy PD controller has a single output denoted by (R2) IF AND Then PD-output .
, as shown in Fig. 2. (R3) IF AND Then PD-output .
374 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997

Fig. 6. The output membership functions for the I component.

(R4) IF AND Then PD-output .

In these rules, is the error, where is the
set-point, is the rate of the change of the error,
“PD-output” is the fuzzy PD control output ,“ ”
means “error positive” and “ ” means “output positive,” Fig. 7. Regions of the fuzzy PD and I controllers’ input-combination values.
etc. Finally, “AND” is the Zadeh’s logical “AND” defined by
.
Similarly, from the membership functions of the fuzzy
I controller, the following control rules are used for the I
component, where is the delayed error signal.
(R5) IF AND THEN I-output
.
(R6) IF AND THEN I-output
.
(R7) IF AND THEN I-output
.
(R8) IF AND THEN I-output Fig. 8. Block diagram and physical setup for the robot arm experiment.
.
In the above rules, “I-output” is the fuzzy I control output
geometry of Fig. 7:
, and the other terms are defined similarly to the PD
component.
These eight rules altogether yield the control actions for the
fuzzy PD I control law.
3) Defuzzification: In the defuzzification step, for both
fuzzy PD and I controllers, the commonly used “center of
mass” formula is employed to defuzzify the incremental
control of the fuzzy control law, (15) as shown in (17)

we obtain the following nine formulas for the ten IC regions:

in IC A (18)

input membership value membership value of output

in IC B (19)
membership value of output
(17)
in IC C (20)
in IC D (21)
in IC E (22)
For the fuzzy PD controller, the value-ranges of the two in IC F (23)
inputs, the error and the rate of change of the error, are
in IC G, J (24)
actually decomposed into ten adjacent input-combination (IC)
regions, as shown in Fig. 7. The control rules for the fuzzy in IC H (25)
PD controller (R1)–(R4), with membership functions and IC
in IC I (26)
regions together, are used to evaluate appropriate fuzzy control
law’s for each region. Similarly, defuzzification of the fuzzy I controller follows
Now, by applying the values , , , the same procedure as described above for the PD component,
and the following straight line formulas obtained from the except that the input signals in this case are different. The
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997 375

Fig. 9. Tracking performance of the conventional PID-controlled system (I).

IC combinations of these two inputs are decomposed into ten our experiments to simplify the design by reducing one control
similar regions, as shown also in Fig. 7. parameter. Also, the constant is chosen by the designer
By applying the values , , , and is fixed after being determined. In our simulation,
and the following straight line formulas obtained from the turns out to be the best choice for the experiment.
geometry of Fig. 7:
III. DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENT
A flexible-link robot arm driven by a dc motor is used for the
experiment in our control systems laboratory. A block diagram
and the physical structure illustrating the setup is shown in
Fig. 8.
A dc motor (Micro-Switch, 24 V) with a tach-generator was
used to rotate a 12-in aluminum bar (arm). The arm produced
a nonlinear loading effect on the motor. The shaft connecting
we obtain the following nine formulas for the ten IC regions: the arm to the motor has a flexible link which adds additional
nonlinearities to the system. A tracking power supply (Kepo)
in IC A (27) was used to amplify the control signal driving the motor. In
addition, a PC, along with a National Instruments input–output
board, was used to close the loop.
in IC B (28) In this robot arm model, damping will be ignored for
simplicity. The joint is assumed to be rotational with flexibility
in IC C (29) modeled as a linear spring of stiffness . The link is assumed
in IC D (30) to be rigid with rotational inertia about the axis of rotation.
Let be the link-angular variable with the vertical axis as
in IC E (31) its reference and be the motor-shaft angle (its reference
in IC F (32) is not important). Assume also that the rotor inertia of the
motor is . Let be the torque, considered as the
in IC H, I (33) control input to the arm system, generated by the motor. Then,
it follows from the Euler–Lagrange equations that
in IC G (34)
in IC J (35)

Note that the constant that multiplies the signal

is used as a parameter for generality here, as well as in the where is the total mass of the arm including the time-
derivation of above. Although it could be used as a varying dynamic loads caused by an external spring connected
control gain, its value is permanently set to one throughout all to the end-effector of the arm, the distance to the joint from
376 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997

Fig. 10. Tracking performance of the fuzzy PID-controlled system (I).

Fig. 11. Tracking performance of the conventional PID-controlled system (II).

the mass-center of the axis of rotation, and the gravity
constant.
The actual data that we used in the experiment were:
(kgm ), (kgm ), (Nm),
(Nm/rad).
IV. EXPERIMENT AND RESULTS
In the experiment, the robot arm system was run using two
control methods: using the conventional digital PID controller
and the fuzzy PID controller, respectively, both based on
the same configuration and under the same conditions. The
conventional digital PID controller was unable to satisfactorily
run the robot arm system (with a nonlinear load) no matter
what combinations of control gains were used. Plots of the
system output with the tuned PID gains that achieved the best
results by trial-and-error are shown in Fig. 9, where and below
s. The fuzzy PID controller, in contrast, controlled
the robot arm system with reasonably good results, obtained
also by trial-and-error, as shown in Fig. 10. In this and the
other fuzzily controlled simulation figures, , ,
, and and are fuzzy gains defined in
Section II-B (see Fig. 2). In Figs. 9 and 10, the robot arm was
not connected to the spring, where the units used are oltage
(1 V 400 r/min) versus second.
Another comparison, at a different speed and with the spring
added to the arm, is shown in Figs. 11 and 12, where the units
used are voltage (1 V 400 r/min) versus s in Fig. 11 while
versus second in Fig. 12. In these experiments, parameters
for the fuzzy PID control gains were found such that there
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997
Fig. 12. Tracking performance of the fuzzy PID-controlled system (II).
Fig. 13. Tracking performance of the fuzzy PID-controlled system under different conditions.
were only a very little overshoot, no oscillations, and a good
tracking performance with respect to the given set-point. For
example, at the speed of 700 r/min the fuzzy PID controller
kept the speed of the motor within a 1.6% band of the
set-point. As the speed decreases, there was an increasing non-
linear loading effect and the performance of the controller went
down. Fig. 13 show three outputs of the fuzzy PID controller
tracking three different speeds, without connecting the spring
to the arm, for the purpose of self-comparison. One should note
that all the outputs are seemingly periodic, due to the inherent
inertia of the physical structure, as is well experienced.
V. CONCLUSIONS
We have discussed the design and experiment of a fuzzy PID
controller for a flexible-joint robot arm with uncertainties from
time-varying loads. The design of the fuzzy PID controller is
377
model-free and is based on rigorous mathematical derivations,
where its stability is also guaranteed (see [10] for detailed
stability analysis for the fuzzy PD controller, which can be
easily converted to this new controller). Experimental results
have shown remarkable tracking performance and robustness
of the fuzzy PID controller: it produces overall better results
than the conventional PID controller in all our experiments.
Here, we must point out that the comparison between the
fuzzy and conventional PID controllers was shown for the
purpose of visualizing how well the fuzzy controller works;
these two controllers are by nature not exactly comparable.
On the other hand, the fuzzy PID controller introduced in this
paper is still not very simple. For instance, it has nine formulas
in ten regions for each of the PD and I controllers, which
have to switch (although automatically and continuously) from
time to time in executing the control actions during a process.
378 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 5, NO. 3, MAY 1997
Nevertheless, based on the satisfactory performance of the new
fuzzy PID controller, we believe that this controller has great
potential in various industrial applications.
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