Automatic reinforcement for robust model‐free neurocontrol of robots without persistent excitation

Summary Model‐based adaptive control suffers over parametrization from the many adaptive parameters compared to the order of system dynamics, leading to sluggish tracking with a poor adaptation transient without robustness. Likewise, adaptive model‐free neurocontrol that relies on the Stone–Weierstrass theorem also suffers from similar problems in addition to over‐fitting to approximate inverse dynamics. This article proposes a novel reinforced adaptive mechanism to guarantee a transient and robustness for the model‐free adaptive control of nonlinear Lagrangian systems. Inspired by the symbiosis of Actor‐Critic (AC) architecture and integral sliding modes, the reinforced stage neural network, analogous to the critic, injects excitation signals to reinforce the parametric learning of the adaptive stage neural network, analogous to the actor to improve the approximation of inverse dynamics. The underlying integral sliding surface error drives improved learning onto a low‐dimensional invariant manifold to guarantee local exponential convergence of tracking errors. Lyapunov stability substantiates the robustness with an improved transient response. Our proposal stands for a hybrid approach between AC and neurocontrol, where the reinforced stage does not require a value function nor reward to provide automatic reinforcement to the adaptive stage parametric adaptation. Dynamic simulations are presented for a nonlinear robot manipulator under different conditions.