Background: As a control strategy of industrial robots, sliding mode control has the advantages of fast response and simple physical implementation, but it still has the problems of chattering and low tracking accuracy caused by chattering. This paper proposes a new sliding mode control strategy for the application of industrial robot control, which effectively solves these problems. Methods: In this paper, a deep deterministic policy gradient–nonlinear nonsingular fast terminal sliding mode control (DDPG–NNFTSMC) strategy is proposed for industrial robot control. In order to improve the tracking control accuracy and anti-interference ability, DDPG is used to approach the uncertainties of the system in real time, which ensures the robustness of the system in various uncertain environments. Lyapunov function is used to prove the stability and finite time convergence of the system. Compared with the nonsingular terminal sliding mode control (NTSMC), the time to reach the equilibrium point is shorter. With the help of MATLAB/Simulink, the tracking accuracy and control effects are compared with traditional terminal sliding mode control (TSMC), NTSMC and radial basis function–sliding mode control (RBF–SMC), the results showed that it had the advantages of nonsingularity, finite time convergence, small tracking error. The motion accuracy and anti-interference ability of the uncertain manipulator system was further improved, and the chattering problem of the system in the motion process is effectively eliminated.

As an important part of the quadruped robot, the leg determines its performance. Flexible legs or flexible joints aid in the buffering and adaptability of robots. At present, most flexible quadruped robots only have two-dimensional flexibility or use complex parallel structures to achieve three-dimensional flexibility. This research will propose a new type of three-dimensional flexible structure. This passive compliant three-dimensional flexibility reduces the weight and complex structure of the robot. The anti-impact performance of the robot is verified by a side impact experiment. The simulation and experiments show that the robot still has good stability even under a simple algorithm and that the flexible leg can reduce the impact on the quadruped robot and improve the environmental adaptability of the robot.

An adaptive proportional integral robust (PIR) control method based on deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPGPIR) is proposed for n-link robotic manipulator systems with model uncertainty and time-varying external disturbances. In this paper, the uncertainty of the nonlinear dynamic model, time-varying external disturbance, and friction resistance of the n-link robotic manipulator are integrated into the uncertainty of the system, and the adaptive robust term is used to compensate for the uncertainty of the system. In addition, dynamic information of the n-link robotic manipulator is used as the input of the DDPG agent to search for the optimal parameters of the proportional integral robust controller in continuous action space. To ensure the DDPG agent’s stable and efficient learning, a reward function combining a Gaussian function and the Euclidean distance is designed. Finally, taking a two-link robot as an example, the simulation experiments of DDPGPIR and other control methods are compared. The results show that DDPGPIR has better adaptive ability, robustness, and higher trajectory tracking accuracy.

In automatic control systems, negative feedback control has the advantage of maintaining a steady state, while positive feedback control can enhance some activities of the control system. How to design a controller with both control modes is an interesting and challenging problem. Motivated by it, on the basis idea of catastrophe theories, taking positive feedback and negative feedback as two different states of the system, an adaptive alternating positive and negative feedback (APNF) control model with the advantages of two states is proposed. By adaptively adjusting the relevant parameters of the constructed symmetric catastrophe function and the learning rule based on error and forward weight, the two states can be switched in the form of catastrophe. Through the Lyapunov stability theory, the convergence of the proposed adaptive APNF control model is proven, which indicates that system convergence can be guaranteed by selecting appropriate parameters. Moreover, we present theoretical proof that the negative feedback system with negative parameters can be equivalent to the positive feedback system with positive parameters. Finally, the results of the simulation example show that APNF control has satisfactory performance in response speed and overshoot.

Most existing wall-climbing robots have a fixed range of load capacity and a step distance that is small and mostly immutable. It is therefore difficult for them to adapt to a discontinuous wall with particularly large gaps. Based on a modular design and inspired by leech peristalsis and internal soft-bone connection, a bionic crawling modular wall-climbing robot is proposed in this paper. The robot demonstrates the ability to handle variable load characteristics by carrying different numbers of modules. Multiple motion modules are coupled with the internal soft bone so that they work together, giving the robot variable-step-distance functionality. This paper establishes the robotic kinematics model, presents the finite element simulation analysis of the model, and introduces the design of the multi-module cooperative-motion method. Our experiments show that the advantage of variable step distance allows the robot not only to quickly climb and turn on walls, but also to cross discontinuous walls. The maximum climbing step distance of the robot can reach 3.6 times the length of the module and can span a discontinuous wall with a space of 150 mm; the load capacity increases with the number of modules in series. The maximum load that $N$ modules can carry is about 1.3 times the self-weight.